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THE AMERICAN RED CROSS 
IN THE GREAT WAR 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

HKW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limitbd 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCXTTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 




NATIONAL HEADQUARTERS OF THE 
AMERICAN RED CROSS 



THE AMERICAN RED CROSS 
IN THE GREAT WAR 



BY 

HENKY P. DAVISON 

CHAIRMAN OF THE WAR COUNCIL 
OF THE AMERICAN RED CROSS 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
1919 

AU rights reserved 



■ -^^rj^ 






COPTEIGHT, 1919, 

bt the ameeican national eed oeoss 



Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1919, 



NOV -6 1919 



J. S. Cashing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



©GI.A53 6450 



Dedicated 

TO 

THE MILLIONS OF WOMEN 

CHILDKEN AND MEN 

WHO 

THROUGH 

THE AMERICAN RED CROSS 

WORKED AND SACRIFICED 

THAT THE MISERY OF 

WAR MIGHT BE 

ALLEVIATED 



FOREWORD 

It is the effort of this book to set forth the scope, char- 
acter and effect of the work of the American Red Cross during 
the Great War. When the war closed more than thirty 
milUon Americans were enrolled in the organization. Some 
of these were in foreign fields ; mo^ of them were at home. 
But, in one way or another, they were all helping. All of 
them working together made up the American Red Cross. 

Stories of special sacrifice or devotion cannot be given here 
and yet few organizations have so closely touched the great 
currents of human fife. Detailed narratives will accordingly 
follow this book. I have sought here to summarize the 
work of the thirty millions as a whole. To characterize 
the Red Cross work of any man or woman, or to attempt 
to describe it with any regard to proper perspective, would 
be invidious if not impossible. I have therefore omitted 
the mention of names. The highest satisfaction any worker 
in the Red Cross can derive from his work is from the fact 
that the work itself was well done. 

The files of the War Council have been freely drawn 
upon in the preparation of this book. And I want to make 
special acknowledgment to every member of the force at 
headquarters, and to the special correspondents and staffs 
of our foreign commissions, who seemingly have vied with 
one another in supplying me, either orally or in writing, with 
material without which the scope of this book could not be 
what it is. Indeed it may accurately be said that the book 
itself is a product of the American Red Cross. 

H. P. Davison. 

New York, 

September 20, 1919. 

vii 



CONTENTS 

PART I 

CHAFTEB FAOB 

I. When the Storm Burst 1 

II. Massing the Forces of Mercy 12 

III. The Comradeship — Divisions and Chapters . . 23 

IV. Work for the Soldier at Home . . . .37 
V. The Navy 52 

VI. Home Service .65 

VII. Soldiers of the Cross 78 

VIII. Mobilizing the Children 93 

IX. Supplies and Transportation . . ... . 107 

X. The Disabled Soldier 122 

PART II 

XI. On the Battlefront ....... 132 

XII. "Backing Up the French" . ... . . . 151 

XIII. The Children of France 163 

XIV. Switzerland the Central Station .... 179 
XV. Belgium 193 

XVI. The Story of Italy 207 

XVII. Great Britain 222 

XVIII. Rumania 233. 

XIX. The Tragedy of the East 252 

XX. Russia 267 

XXI. The League of Red Cross Societies .... 282 

XXII. Appendix 291 

ix 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Lithograph by Joseph Pennell . . . ' . . . Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

An American Red Cross Summons 14 

Enrollment of the Men of Ward A at Dartf ord Hospital in the Amer- 
ican Red Cross for the Christmas Drive 20 

American Red Cross Chapter Scene, Buffalo, N. Y. . . .30 
A Camp Study in Black and White as it Appeared to American Red 

Cross Workers 42 

New Sweaters for Old at Fort Oglethorpe . . , . .46 
These English Pines are on the Grounds of the American Red Cross 

^ Base Hospital at Dartford, near London 56 

Bathing and Disinfecting Plant in England Loaned by the Amer- 
ican Red Cross 60 

The Home Service Office of the American Red Cross at the Union 

Station, Washington, D. C 70 

The American Red Cross Serving Our Colored Troops ... 74 

The Greatest Red Cross Parade ever Held in America ... 86 

Members of the Junior Red Cross at Work in a Schoolroom . . 100 

The Gauze Cutter 112 

American Red Cross Motor Ambulances, Hospital Tents, and Other 

Supplies in the Courtyard of the Palais Royal in Paris . .116 
American Red Cross Moving Pictures in Ward at Walter Reed Hos- 
pital in Washington 124 

Rebuilding the Human Face 126 

A Senegalese Soldier who has Lost Both Arms, Writing to Thank the 

American Red Cross for His New Pair of Artificial Arms . . 128 
A Scene in a Convalescent House of the American Red Cross in the 

United States 130 

An American Red Cross Rolling Canteen 138 

The American Red Cross at the Front in France .... 144 
A Room in the Office of the American Red Cross in Paris . .152 

Happy to See Their Own Country at Last 160 

Repatriated Hospital Children in France 168 

Five Little Youngsters All Tucked in Bed 174 

A Source of Malaria and Other Disease Removed by the Red Cross 194 

xi 



xii ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACINQ FAGS 

The Ceremony in the Coliseum Held upon the Anniversary of the 
United States' Entry into the War in Honor of the Work of the 

American Red Cross 208 

Children at Perugia Receiving American Red Cross Clothing . . 210 
Yarn Supplied by the American Red Cross being Weighed before 

Distribution to the Refugees at Tivoli, Italy . . . . 212 
In Front of the American Red Cross Recreatorio at Fiesole . . 214 

American Red Cross Warehouses at Milan 216 

American Red Cross Workroom at Rimini 218 

An American Red Cross Canteen in England 222 

American Soldiers Seeing London from an American Red Cross 

Omnibus 224 

Central Building of the American Red Cross Hospital at Salisbury, 

England 226 

At Work in the Laboratory of a British Base Hospital . . . 228 
American Red Cross Convalescent Hospital for Officers at Lingfield, 

England 230 

The King and Queen of Rumania Returning from a Visit to a Red 

Cross Hospital at the Front 242 

Some of the 1500 Armenian Exiles as Seen by the Red Cross Com- 
mission 260 

"Is Everybody Happy?" 272 

An American Red Cross Dental Station in Serbia, Three Quarters 

of a Mile from the Front Line Trenches 278 

"Secondary Aid" . . . . . . . . . .286 



THE AMERICAN RED CROSS 
IN THE GREAT WAR 



THE AMERICAN RED CROSS 
IN THE GREAT WAR 

PART I 
CHAPTER I 

WHEN THE STORM BURST 

Nationalization — President Wilson Becomes President of the Red Cross 
— Red Cross Mercy Ship — Increase in Membership — American 
Relief Clearing House in Paris — Departure of the German Am- 
bassador from Washington — President Declares War — Appoint- 
ment of the War Council — The First Drive for $100,000,000. 

IN the year 1905 the American National Red Cross, 
profiting, perhaps, not a little by the lessons of the 
Spanish War, was finally and permanently incorporated and 
nationalized ; the President of the United States became its 
president; and the War Department its auditor. It had 
behind it the full sponsorship of the United States Govern- 
ment; its books were open; it was the property of the 
people and in their hands. In that sense, and in almost no 
other, it was ready for the frightful thing that Germany 
was preparing for the world. 

It is, of course, not my intention to do more than refer 
to the activities of the Red Cross of that day. Save for 
prompt and effective relief to sufferers from fire and flood 
and every other form of calamity, no matter where occur- 
ring, it pursued a helpful but on the whole rather a pacific 



2 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

and uneventful course. The Red Cross of the first three 
years of the Great War may, likewise, be told briefly. All 
the effort of the organization at that time — and there was 
earnest effort, however stereotyped, in many directions — 
may be said to have centered around the conscription of 
funds, the enlistment of personnel, and the gathering of 
supplies to meet an infinitely greater demand for help than 
ever before. Factories were driven to top speed in the 
production of materials. Warehouses were filled to burst- 
ing with incoming gifts. Yet, in the face of so great a 
necessity, the leaders of the Red Cross were hampered 
by the laggard movement of monetary contributions. The 
psychology of this unwillingness to loosen the purse-strings 
is clear now. The truth was that America was still cased 
in its shell; it resented a war that it did not under- 
stand. 

None the less, a month after the German troops crossed 
the Belgium border, a Red Cross ship sailed away, — a 
German keel, painted with the authorized red strake which, 
by agreement of the nations, marked the mercy ship, — and 
distributed her hospital units and medical supplies, her 
gauze and anaesthetics, her hospital garments, cigarettes, 
and camp comforts for the fighting men of countries whose 
prayers had not availed to save them from this stroke of 
manifest destiny. Into France and England, into Russia 
and Serbia, into every place where the blight of war had 
fallen, even into Germany, these well-chosen benefactions 
found their way. To be sure it was a very small incident, 
this sailing of that stout little ship, and in the shadow of a 
year or more of vast accomplishment no wonder that it 
seems indistinct and ineffably far away. 

But it is all an old story now — even that pregnant time 
when surely, if slowly, the picture on our moral retina was 
changing; when one after another the studied German 
insults, the revelation of guile, the wanton destruction of 



-4* 



WHEN THE STORM BURST 



peaceful vessels, the brutal violations of neutrality, in 
short, the whole train of deliberate offenses against decency, 
were preparing the inevitable result. 



Nothing could be more dramatic than the change that 
came over the United States in the first three months of the 
year 1917. It was almost magical in its swiftness. The 
war was at the sunmiit of its intensity ; the tortured Allies, 
armies and populace alike, had come almost to the extremity 
of effort; conditions in France were as ominous as they 
were heartbreaking. This supreme moment found many 
people without the bare necessities of life. The roads 
were full of the homeless, the hungry, and the half clad. 
The cities were clogged with them ! Simultaneously, in 
the United States, the weary period of inaction was drawing 
to its end. The signs were no longer to be misread. Honor 
had been stretched to its last shred of endurance and con- 
tinued peace, it was plain, could only be had at the price of 
shame. (During all this wretched time the conduct of the 
American Red Cross was, to say the least, most credit- 
able. Crippled by public inertia, by the popular inclination 
to keep out of war at all hazards, those who guided the 
destinies of the orgaiiization nevertheless strained every 
nerve, utilized every resource, to prepare for the storm which 
they knew was bound to come. They were held back by 
the ancient habit of the people — of waiting to give to the 
Red Cross until some great catastrophe had shocked the 
world and newspaper pictures from the zone of disaster 
furnished ocular proof pi ruin, disease, and starvation. 
Day and night, however, they labored, formulating plans, 
creating a nucleus which proved of inexpressible value 
when the day of trial arrived, and saved months of slow 
and retarding toil. By dint of the most industrious and 
carefully organized effort they increased the membership 



4 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

in a few months from 22,000 to 280,000, and the number of 
Chapters by more than a hundred. 

At this period President Wilson penned an appeal to the 
American people on behalf of this sorely tried organization, 
in which he said : ^'It is for you to decide whether the most 
prosperous nation in the world will allow its national relief 
organization to keep up with its work or withdraw from a 
field where there exists the greatest need ever recorded in 
history. '^ 

And even the President's summons failed to arouse the 
people from their lethargy. 

Dissecting the military and civilian needs, incident to the 
creation of an army, the Red Cross organized and equipped 
base hospitals as rapidly as they could accumulate the 
money. The service to our forces on the Mexican border 
had given some opportunity for practical training, which 
they improved to the uttermost. They directed their relief 
work for the Allied armies — such as they were able to 
perform — through the American Relief Clearing House in 
Paris, which had been organized early in the war to cen- 
tralize and promote all American activities. By so doing 
they fortified and insured the efficacy of that institution 
which, afterwards, was classed as one of the greatest relief 
organizations in Europe. What that alliance meant is 
shown by the fact that from that time on all members of the 
Clearing House wore the uniform of the American Red 
Cross. 

From February, 1917, events moved with a rapidity 
that, in retrospect, leaves one almost breathless, though at 
the time it seemed painfully slow. On the second of Feb- 
ruary Count Von Bernstorff, the German Ambassador, was 
handed his papers and, on the following day, the Red Cross 
moved its scanty belongings into the New Memorial build- 
ing, as yet without heat and equipment, and still littered 
with the d6bris of construction. The vice-chairman sent 



WHEN THE STORM BURST 5 

out to the 267 Chapters a telegram which deserves to be 
immortahzed in the history of the Red Cross, and in the 
history of humanity, as a master-work of preparedness : — 

"If not already active appoint following committees : finance, hospital 
garments and surgical supplies, comfort bags (see Circular 126), packing 
and shipping, publicity and information, motor service ; appoint com- 
mittee on cooperation with outside organizations. ... If not already 
done appoint committee on education (outlined in Circular 144). . . . 
Possibility of organizing sanitary training detachments should be taken 
up at once. (See Circular 136.) " 

That was on a Saturday. On Sunday and for many 
long days afterward the answers by wire and mail came 
pouring into the great building. The marble halls were 
crowded with stenographers, who worked from dawn till 
dark and long after in a temperature far below freezing, 
answering the thousands of letters that came from all 
corners of the country asking for orders or instructions how 
to form Chapters. 

Then March came with its swift making of history : the 
Zimmermann note stripped off Germany's mask ; and the 
House upheld the bill for the armirig of American merchant- 
men. Inauguration Day, usually a pompous ceremonial, 
passed like a mere incident in the Washington routine. 
Two days later the last Romanoff abandoned in terror the 
throne of all the Russias and the German annihilation of 
the Eastern front had begun. The German plot for a 
Hindu uprising in India startled England. Three American 
ships in a day went down before the German submarines. 
Berlin was ''bitterly surprised'' at America's resentment, 
and fifteen thousand people crowded in Madison Square 
Garden and cheered for war. The pacifists were pleading 
for delay with a thousand tongues, and the ''willful men" in 
the Senate still struggled to keep the muzzle on the dogs of 
war. 

And then, decently and in order, the thing was done. On 



6 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

April 6th Congress, called by the President, in special 
session, voted war. Twenty thousand militia were called 
out, and then four thousand more ; enlistment in the Navy 
was ordered for immediate service overseas; money was 
placed at the disposal of the President, and the selective 
draft system was adopted. Men in khaki, forerunners of 
millions that were to follow, began to appear in the city 
streets. English and French Commissions hurried to 
America. The United States was launched on the greatest 
and most perilous conflict in history. 

Meanwhile, the Red Cross, like the Army, to the utmost 
limit of its means had mapped out the work of the '^crowded 
hour'' that was at hand. Base hospital units for the Army 
had been multiplied with all possible speed, and were steadily 
increasing throughout the country. Twenty-five were al- 
ready organized and equipped ready for service, and four 
more were in progress. Three field columns had been 
formed, and three additional bases for navy hospitals or- 
ganized. Through the Chapters and other organizations, 
surgical dressings, garments, and other supplies to the value 
of eight thousand dollars for each unit had been made and 
contributed, in addition to all the offerings that had already 
been sent abroad. The Red Cross had enrolled more than 
seven thousand graduate nurses, and plans for the training 
of another regiment of nurses were under way. < Even the 
little knowledge that we had at hand of Europe in the throes 
of war was sufficient to teach us that every doctor and every 
nurse should prepare ; that every city and town should be 
ready on the instant to get under its burden ; and that volun- 
tary service and coordination of relief agencies, under the 
Red Cross, was a crying necessity. 

Naturally, the country had no understanding of all this. 
It did not know that the Red Cross was not in shape to take 
care of an Army, although neither the army nor the Red 
Cross was blind to this fact. From studious investigations 



WHEN THE STORM BURST 7 

in Europe the Red Cross knew in detail the most effective 
methods of organizing base hospitals, medical supply bases, 
ambulance sections, civilian relief centers, and all other 
way-stations of mercy and restoration. 

"I spent a year and a half/' wrote one of the organizers of that early 
Red Cross, "in the heart of the war in Europe — one year of it as the 
American Delegate of the Commission for Rehef in Belgium, in charge 
of the Belgium Province at Antwerp. I saw how refugees must be fed 
and clothed, sheltered and administered to, how those dependent on the 
soldiers at the front must be assisted, and how the civilian population 
must be organized and energized, if it is to survive where the waves of 
war have passed over it. To do such work adequately means the loyal 
support of every man, woman and child in the land. We have this in 
Belgium. To do the work which the Red Cross should do, and must do, 
in America, requires the support of far more members than the American 
Red Cross has to-day. The work should touch all humanity, alien or 
friendly, rich or poor, high or low." 

But while the membership under active urging was in- 
creasing with great rapidity, the money lagged. It was 
clear enough now that the task facing the Red Cross was 
no longer a matter of sending a Red Cross ship to scatter its 
hastily collected supplies around the globe. Red Cross 
shipments, if its work was to be competent and nearly equal 
to the needs, would be measured in fleets; and such a 
Red Cross required a wider horizon, a longer arm, and a 
deeper pocket. It had been computed on the basis of the 
old condition that the organization must have at least five 
millions of dollars to meet the needs of the war. 



On the 10th of May, 1917, President Wilson appointed a 
War Council for the American National Red Cross, and I 
was asked to take the chairmanship. 

It was not long before it became very apparent that our 
mission, at least in the narrow aspect of it, would be to 
look after the men of our own Army and to assist the 



8 THE AMERICAN BED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

War Department in doing the things it could not do 
alone or that did not fall wholly within its province. 
That was indeed our duty, but the bitter sacrifices of 
the other nations for three long years had brought into the 
equation the vital and imperative question, however illu- 
minating the answer later, whether there was in the world 
— or in America — any such thing as national gratitude 
and appreciation ; whether plain, simple humanity had been 
utterly submerged in an ocean of commercialism. 

In this whole development the War Council held firmly to 
two things : first, a vision of our bounden duty as a people ; 
and, second, an abiding faith that our national heart, when 
we found it, would prove to be in the right place. Nobody 
could fail to discern the need : Thousands of old men, women, 
and children were homeless and starving, fleeing before a 
relentless enemy; whole towns and cities were crumbling 
into dust under the increasing pounding of the guns ; food, 
clothing, and medicine were lacking ; and disease was raising 
its ugly head in the wake of death and desolation. If ever 
the brotherhood of man was to be demonstrated and proved, 
the hour had surely come. 

But while emphasis gradually was laid upon the necessity 
of money, if we were to do our part, nevertheless we of the 
War Council did not lose sight of the fact that money would 
be the smallest part of it — merely the bridge by which we 
must cross to the land where our duty called us and where 
our opportunity lay. You might, we agreed, pack the 
building with dollars and still fail to do the thing we 
ought to do. Our concentration here was about the amount 
of money we should ask for. In working out this problem 
we discussed at length about a request for twenty-five 
millions of dollars. The essential thing, if the Red Cross 
was to accomplish its maximum of good, was to have 
everybody share in it ; to be able to go now, at the very 
climax of need, to the suffering people of Europe, carrying 



WHEN THE STORM BURST 9 

the message of good-will from all the people of America, — 
the poor, the rich, the young, and the old, all asking the 
privilege of helping them in their distress. 

And so the appeal went out to the country for a hundred 
miUion dollars. It was a neat sum but, as time has shown, 
small for the magnitude of the work involved. In taking 
account of stock we found that the Red Cross statement 
showed one Habihty. True, it was a moral one, making 
it all the more binding, viz., the obligation to meet and re- 
lieve suffering caused by the world tragedy. But it also 
showed one asset — an asset that overbalanced all : the 
good-will of the American people. In sum total the state- 
ment seemed an excellent one to me. I believed that the 
American people would see far more in the Red Cross effort 
than simply taking care of our own men and that they would 
look upon it, as I did, as an opportunity to do the great big 
human thing ; nor did I have the smallest doubt but that 
the campaign to raise that money would start a spirit of 
giving and of sacrifice that would mean a great deal more 
than the money itself. 

There were obstacles in the way: summer was coming 
on and the people were preparing to go away; moreover, 
the first Liberty Loan drive had the right of way and noth- 
ing must interfere with that. We were all bound to take 
off our coats and help it. It was finally and definitely 
decided that we should fix June 18-25 — three days after 
the closing of the loan drive — as Red Cross week. From 
that time on it was Hke a military campaign. The gentle- 
man who had been chosen to head the Executive Committee 
for the campaign went at the task like a veritable Foch. 
Like Foch he certainly proved to be a great offensive com- 
mander, and his staff were of the same dynamic character. 

We had one month, to be exact, in which to prepare for 
this task. A New York friend of the Red Cross set a key- 
note for the undertaking by an initial gift of a milHon dollars. 



10 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

It is my belief that it was this inspirational act that gave to 
the whole undertaking an almost decisive influence. An 
interesting feature was the calling to Washington of some 
450 leading men from all parts of the country for the pur- 
pose of laying before them the foundation of our plans. 
The conference, strictly speaking, developed into a great 
patriotic gathering and resulted in enlisting the services 
of a group of men with large experience in financial matters 
and in the raising of funds. 

The next step was to extend the organization. The 
country was mapped out into four divisions, each with a 
director in charge, and under these were 114 field agents 
and an office force that grew to more than 300 members. 
Presently, and while the whole country was organizing, 
we were flooded with letters and telegrams, all of which 
must be answered. It seemed as if all the brains and 
energy in the world were concentrated on delivering the 
message to the people, awakening their interest, and getting 
results. 

The whole country was humming with activity long 
before the drive started. Men left important positions 
to come and ask what they could do. They were given 
a desk and a job and went at it. And when the local 
workers wanted ^' ammunition,'^ it was provided in the 
form of advertising copy, placards, street-car signs, banners, 
slogans for electric-signs, pictures for lantern slides, material 
for speeches, sermons and lectures, newspaper features, and 
advice without end. And, curiously enough, the public 
never realized that all through that fevered time when city, 
town, and country were at white heat over the drive, the 
Red Cross organization was busier than it had ever been in 
its life, planning and putting into action the work of relief 
which the money was to do. 

With the team leaders it was a game, and they played it 
with all the sporting joy in the world. Everywhere people 



WHEN THE STORM BURST 11 

vied with one another in giving. Rival cities strove with 
one another to be first in raising their allotment, and then 
started a new contest to see which should go farthest beyond 
the mark. 

But why recount now the story of that week ! It is still 
fresh in everybody's memory. It was a typical American 
accomplishment, and when at the close of the campaign it 
was known that the country had given $115,000,000, there 
was rejoicing like that which follows a great political victory. 
Better far than that, for it was the rejoicing of a great 
people in that they had demonstrated a vast capacity for 
unselfishness. And there was still more good news to come, 
at least to the managers of the campaign : it was found that 
the collecting of this great fund, thanks to the willingness of 
everybody to help, had cost only a little over one half of one 
per cent. 



CHAPTER II 

MASSING THE FORCES OF MERCY 

Plans of the War Council — Appointment of Foreign Commission — 
Muster Roll of Volunteers — Word from General Pershing — 
Decentralization —^ The Working Machine at National Headquar- 
ters. 

AGAINST the dark background of that eventful year 
few things, naturally, stand out more luminous to 
me than the arrival of the Red Cross at a commanding 
financial position. Obviously, such an increase in money 
power meant that we could do for our soldiers and sailors 
all that we should do ; it meant that our people indorsed 
our purpose to go to the peoples of Europe in the way that 
we should go ; and, finally, it meant nothing more nor less 
than a resolve on the part of the Nation that liberty should 
triumph at any cost. . . . 

There was no time, however, to dream over the great 
mission of the future. In the numberless informal confer- 
ences which it held prior to its first formal meeting on the 
21st of May, 1917, the Red Cross War Council had taken 
the measure of its task and proceeded with the work of 
massing the forces of mercy side by side with the raising 
of the great army which America, now awake and full of 
purpose, was creating in record time, and for the doing 
of which we had the faith, the credit, and the women — the 
problem of the moment being how to capitalize them all. 

In general our plan divided itself into two problems : 
first, to get the necessary relief to Europe in the shortest 
possible time, and so avert what we now know would have 

12 



MASSING THE FORCES OF MERCY 13 

developed before long into a colossal catastrophe ; second, 

to organize ample means of caring for all the various needs 

of our own army. For the solution of this problem we had 

three possessions of value : the first was the machine which 

our predecessors in control of the Red Cross had worked to 

build up ; the second was a now rapidly growing membership 

and Chapter organization ; the third, — and of inestimable 

importance in the work of expanding the machine and of 

putting it on a war footing, — was the volunteer service of 

an army of some of the most competent, aggressive, and 

experienced men in the country, and of women who had 

brains, initiative, and the inborn quality of leadership. 

Indeed, the day was an exceptional one which did not reveal 

new Red Cross assets of superlative value. It began to 

be borne in upon us that we had not more than half read the 

Red Cross balance sheet. 

It was not a matter of sentiment alone that brought the 
War Council, at its very first meeting, to a reahzation that 
our duty was to get help to France; on the contrary, it 
was a clear business proposition to ascertain without a 
minute's delay just what was needed there first and to 
start it on its way there as early as possible. We had a 
sufficiently clear picture of the situation; what we needed 
was to measure it up, even if only tentatively, in the terms 
of necessary dollars. 

Then it was that the Red Cross asked General Pershing 
what it could do for him, and almost immediately came 
his answering cable: — 

"If you want to do something for me for God's sake 'buck up the 
French.' They have been fighting for three years and are getting ready 
for their fourth winter. They have borne a tremendous burden, and 
whatever assistance we can lend them promptly will be of the greatest 
possible value." 

It must not, however, for a moment be supposed that 
the spirit of the poilu was broken or that he was not fighting 



14 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

with the dash and unflinching courage of his race; but 
there were sectors where the conditions of war and the long 
continuation of service were beyond the endurance of body 
and soul and, added to which, there was the consuming 
anxiety which preyed upon the soldier from the devastated 
regions concerning the whereabouts and welfare of his 
family. 

To this end a commission of eighteen men, bent on clear- 
ing away a mountain of misery, was dispatched to Europe, 
and landed in France on the 13th of June. 

Meantime, the American Ambulance in Paris needed new 
cars ; and the Civilian Relief in France, trying to cope with 
the tremendous problem of the soldiers, the refugees, and 
the numberless pitiful children, called by cable for women's 
and children's clothing, preserved milk, seeds, farm tools, 
and money for the mayors of villages to distribute among 
the starving refugees that had been quartered upon them. 
Further funds were needed for the purchase of hospital 
supplies and hospital garments, rubber goods, and surgical 
instruments — all matters of life and death. 

Unquestionably, those early days were full days. Head- 
quarters was on the tiptoe of expectancy and perilously 
near chaos. The whole world, it seemed to me, was 
writing to Red Cross Headquarters at Washington upon 
a thousand-and-one different subjects. 

Through the end of May and into June, while the Com- 
mission to France was hurrying across the Atlantic and the 
War Fund drive was going on, we were trying with one 
hand to handle the incoming business, and with the other 
to frame up an organization that should be broad and 
strong enough in all directions to ^' carry on" as long as the 
war would last. The success or failure of this whole under- 
taking hung upon it. In due time we chose legal counsel, 
and selected a great New York trust company to handle 
the money end of the business ; we formally appointed the 




AN AMERICAN RED CROSS SUMMONS. 



MASSING THE FORCES OF MERCY 15 

Secretary of the Treasury of the United States as treasurer 
of the war fund, and the trust company provided from its 
office force a corps of forty trained men to look after the 
finances. And while we were seeking everywhere for 
experienced men to fill important positions, it was a ray 
of encouragement to receive this message from a former 
United States Minister : ^' You will find men everywhere are 
ready to cooperate enthusiastically with you to a greater 
extent than you are perhaps aware." 

One by one, as the expansion progressed, we found them. 
All through the hot summer months we kept on building 
up the machine. During the day the War Council held 
meetings at Headquarters, and in the evening, to change 
the scene and put new life into our work, we continued them 
at my house in Washington. There was no let-up to the 
volume of correspondence from all over the country; nor 
was there any cessation of the cries for help which kept the 
cables continuously busy. 

But while the work of foreign relief was imperative, it in- 
volved, perhaps, less of difficulty than did the solving of 
the problem of selecting the right men for the Commis- 
sions, which were being formed to represent and to do the 
work of the American Red Cross in foreign countries. 
What we required was to get men who, although sympa- 
thetic and human in their appreciation, had expert knowl- 
edge, unbounded energy, initiative, cold judgment, keen 
perception of the point of attack, and the faculty of instant 
decision and consummate skill in organization ; we needed 
men who could cut red tape, men who could rise to emer- 
gencies; we needed men of tact and diplomacy for the 
handling of what, unquestionably, was a most difficult 
mission. For there are in all the world no more sensitive 
peoples than the Latin races, and to have gone to them in 
such a crisis with anything that bore the faintest tinge of 
charity or condescension would have been fatal to the 



16 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

intent and purpose of the Red Cross. Our money would 
have been given its value as money but nothing more. 
Here, again, the future and the cause of humanity hung in 
a fine balance. The story of what was achieved in France 
and Italy will show with what delicacy this critical phase 
of the work was carried through. But while the task of 
planning for the relief of Europe and determining what 
was best to do first was put squarely upon the shoulders of 
the Commissions which, one after another, were rapidly 
dispatched to the various countries, nothing was enacted, 
whether military, diplomatic, or financial, which had not 
received thorough consideration from every angle and with 
confirmative advice from those within whose special province 
it fell. 

From the very beginning it was the controlling principle of 
the War Council that nothing, however small, should be 
done which could not bear careful scrutiny and which was 
not fully warranted by existing conditions. The Red Cross 
forever maintains a scrupulous regard for the fact that it 
is the people's servant and is spending the people's money ; 
its books and its transactions at all times have been open 
to public inspection. All of which, nevertheless, increased 
materially the burden of the work. At a very early stage 
of the proceedings, therefore, it became apparent that the 
Headquarters' force, augmented though it had been, was 
soon coming to the point where it would be submerged unless 
some means of simplifying its duties could be found. 

In appointing a general manager the Red Cross found a 
man who was versed in the handling of big problems and 
knew how to reduce them to little ones. He solved the 
difficulty with the word '^decentralization " which, in this 
case, resolved itself into the partitioning of the United States 
into thirteen divisions, each division a smaller Red Cross, 
with all its departments and bureaus under a divisional chief 
and a force complete in every detail with the various lines of 



MASSING THE FORCES OF MERCY 17 

endeavor firmly and clearly outlined. It cleared the sky in 
a day — it saved the situation. When once the foundation 
was complete, the War Council had no more to do with the 
Chapters or any of their activities, save in the way of judg- 
ing the needs, devising methods, and fixing standards. The 
Chapter's business was regulated in the department to 
which it belonged by the divisional officers. The division 
manager was the general and supreme in his division. He 
was to his division what the general manager in Washington 
was to the entire organization. Washington Headquarters 
was now free to proceed with the handling of the larger prob- 
lems which, with the widening of the sphere of effort and 
the progress in army-building, were growing daily to greater 
magnitude and importance. It was simply taking a leaf 
from the book of armies and of big business, and] it mul- 
tiplied the efficiency of the whole Red Cross organization 
at a time when efficiency, or the lack of it, spelled victory 
or defeat. The main problem of the division arrangement 
lay, as it did in the Commissions to Europe, in selecting 
with the most studious care the men to head the divisions. 
It was not until September that this important matter was 
finally settled and the roster of division chiefs and their 
forces brought to completion. 

In order to secure the maximum result from all lines of 
effort, it was necessary to expand and reform in many points 
the work of the several departments. The Chapters and 
the membership, which in the preceding year had been 
substantially extended, now increased automatically and 
with a speed which told clearly enough that the human 
force throughout the country was aroused and at work. In 
January, 1917, the Red Cross managers had started a cam- 
paign for a million members before the following year. 
By September there were six millions, and the Chapters, num- 
bering six hundred when war was declared, now ran into the 
thousands. At the end of the membership drive in Decern- 



18 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

ber there were 22,000,000 names on the Hsts. All through 
the summer singers, actors, and people of every trade and 
calling taxed their wits to devise entertainments for the 
benefit of the Red Cross. To enumerate the sources of 
contribution is impossible. The stimulation of interest, 
which in earlier days had been one of our vital concerns, 
had ceased to bother us. Interest had stimulated itself. 

Meanwhile the Chapter organization had done its work 
well. Production was going forward in a wave. It was the 
age of wool ; everybody was knitting ! In the large cities, 
particularly the division centers, model workrooms were 
estabhshed ; to the last little auxiliary in the farthest town 
everybody was doing something for the Red Cross. 

The divisional plan, distributing as it did the burden of 
details, had enabled Headquarters to do effective things 
in standardizing and perfecting the system of production, 
collection, and shipment. So that before the summer was 
far advanced a great volume of earnest, but misdirected 
effort had been turned into established channels, its effec- 
tiveness doubled, and confusions and waste of strength and 
nervous tissue greatly reduced. 

Millions of circulars were sent out to the Chapters through 
the divisional offices, giving diagrams and explicit directions 
for the making of knitted goods and other requirements, 
not only for equipment of our Army but for the hospital 
work of the units which were hurried to war, and to supply 
the urgent needs of Allied hospital service now so sorely 
taxed. With an eye to future requirements the educational 
work of the Chapter organization was vigorously expanded. 
The Red Cross, like the Government, was making its prepa- 
rations for a long war. With this in mind, training classes 
were established and the Junior Red Cross, so long looked 
upon as '^child's play,^' was converted into a large con- 
tributive factor, both for the present and the future. 

Throughout the country there was a multitude of willing 



MASSING THE FORCES OP MERCY 19 

souls, bursting with patriotism, eager to help in some way 
but debarred by sex, age, or physical infirmity from going 
mto the trenches. The Red Cross was their lodestar It 
was the work of the Department of Development to con- 
centrate, to organize, to direct this mass of energy Much 
of It also was absorbed by what had previously borne the 
stilled and unconvincing name of "Civilian Rehef " but 
which, now that its day of supreme usefulness had 'come 
was made over into a practical instrument under the ex- 
pressive title of "Home Service." 

In the schedule which the Red Cross was perfecting 
Home Service was the ultimate power behind the man 
behind the gun, the force that never slept, and that must 
know, from day to day, the condition, the needs, and the 
worries of the families left behind. As the building of the 
Army progressed, no branch of Red Cross effort gave more 
substantial proof of its value than this. It was the guard- 
ian and the surety of national morals. What Home 
bervice did towards helping to better the condition of the 
Voilu It hkewise did for the American soldier at the front 
and the reserve army of waiting folks at home. 

The vital factor in Home Service is neighborly feeling, 
sympathy, appreciation, personal approach. For that 
reason its work had to be correlated with the Chapters • 
and so in every Chapter there was a Home Service section' 
not bothered with knitting, paying no heed to bandages or 
hospital garments, but concentrating on the personal needs 
the strictly private troubles of the soldier's family. It sooh 
became apparent that the field of Home Service would grow 
wider with every fresh detachment of men sent overseas. 
An educational system was devised centering in the colleges 
and summer schools, but extending in less elaborate form 
down to the Chapter branches, to teach both theory and 
practice to fit people for what was bound to be a necessary 
and in more respects than one a dehcate mission. In a few 



20 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

months an immense work of organization was done in the 
field. 

The selective draft was now in full swing. The tramp, 
tramp, tramp of the men of twenty-one to thirty-one of every 
state, city, and township was ringing in our ears. This was 
no mere memory of '61 ! In the Red Cross we lived from day 
to day in the consciousness of the fact that the Army's mani- 
fold needs was hard upon our heels. The Army was only one 
item in our duty, but it was our first charge under the terms 
of our charter and, besides, it was America — our home 
folks. Moreover, in the War and Navy Departments 
whose servants, primarily, the Red Cross was, we had 
superiors who wanted quick delivery. 

The equipment of soldiers with sweaters, helmets, wrist- 
lets, socks, comfort kits, and all the other manifold things 
necessary to keep them comfortable was, to say the least, 
a substantial order, yet it was merely an incident in the 
program. For the training of its multitudes the Govern- 
ment, at that moment, was building thirty-four camps and 
cantonments in various parts of the country, and the Red 
Cross must be on hand in them all prepared to do every- 
thing and more than it was created to do. There would be 
sick soldiers and cases of accidents, for which we must fur- 
nish hospital units, nurses, and medical supplies ; also, we 
must have competent people there to look after our work, 
for this was not a case where a casual clerk or shiftless office 
boy would do. We must provide housing for a Red Cross 
^ lighthouse" in every camp to which the soldier, worried 
or in need, could find his way ; and when he left training 
and moved from one camp to another or to the ship which 
was to bear him away on the great adventure, we must 
break the journey with a little food, a little cheer, and medical 
attendance if necessary. There was welfare work around 
the camp, too, and care, both material and moral, of the 
adjacent communities. There was the maintenance of the 



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MASSING THE FORCES OF MERCY 21 

Red Cross Motor Corps, not alone for our own use, but for 
the Army and the Navy. And there was the Ambulance 
Corps, with forty-five companies of over 5000 men in train- 
ing and in service. 

So through the first summer and fall we drove ahead, whip 
and spur, gathering in the people, enrolling nurses, erecting 
buildings, buying supplies and machinery and means of 
transit, establishing canteens and equipping the Red Cross 
at every possible point where it could come in contact with 
the life and needs of the soldier. The War Department 
issued a call for 25,000 nurses before the end of the 
year. All over the country we carried on a nurses' drive ; 
and the Department of Nursing in every one of the thir- 
teen divisions tried to surmount many and grave obstacles. 
We combed the medical profession of the country, too, 
for doctors to go into service ; we organized a Medical Ad- 
visory Committee of famous doctors and sanitary experts 
to give counsel in all matters relating to medicine and 
sanitation. 

I have tried here merely to sketch in outline the various 
departments of duty which had to be mapped out, peopled, 
and set in motion, and to produce a sort of composite picture, 
necessarily inadequate, of the Red Cross in this vast for- 
mative period. At times it seemed well-nigh impossible 
to meet the accumulation of simultaneous demands. While 
careful and far-reaching were the plans for organization of 
our domestic work, oftentimes it became necessary to make 
fundamental changes, experiment having foretold failure to 
discharge our duties when the supreme test should come; 
and all this time the heart-breaking cry of suffering Europe 
was never for a moment still. 

The work in France, as I have previously stated, had been 
started first, but within a very short time we had commis- 
sions to Russia, Rumania, Serbia, and Italy. A Commis- 
sioner and Deputy Commissioner for England had been 



22 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

chosen and a special department for Belgium appointed 
under the direction of the Commission to France. 

Moreover, in connection with these, we had not neglected 
to build up a Department of Supplies and Transportation 
to handle all the millions of dollars' worth of purchases, the 
collection of the vast supplies from the Chapters, the pro- 
vision of material, rail freights, the procurement of ocean 
tonnage, and the delivery of all the Red Cross benefactions 
to the points where they were needed. Further in the 
background, but indispensable to every day's labors, were 
the advisory committees to various departments, legal 
advisers who canvassed all our transactions, — particularly 
with regard to international relations, — a general manager 
whose function was to complete the coordination of all 
branches, solve problems, and smooth out rough places, a 
Bureau of Naval Affairs connecting the Red Cross in all 
lines of its service with the Navy and its requirements, while 
in the foreground was the Department of Publicity, estab- 
lishing more firmly, as the work grew, our link with the 
pubHc which stood behind the work. 



CHAPTER III 

THE COMRADESHIP 

Divisions and Chapters 

Orders from Abroad — The Response of Women — Knitting no Longer 
in the Feminine Gender — New Methods and Machines — Evolution 
of the System — Total Production of Chapters — Army Mending — 
Emergency Orders — Red Cross Motor Corps — Canteen Workers — 
First Aid, Home Dietetics, etc. — Home Service — Total Number 
of Chapters and Members — Fourteenth Division. 

THAT which we call a Red Cross Chapter is a highly- 
perfected piece of social machinery. Its motor-power 
is supplied by the highest and yet the commonest human 
impulses and its product, applied humanity, is the bright 
hope of a war-wrung world ; but its high mission is based 
firmly upon modern business principles. Romance flees 
from the committee reports, the organization charts, the 
careful records, the waybills and invoices, and all the matter- 
of-fact and dreary system that insures the arrival of bandages 
and nurses in a plague-stricken East and the temperature 
of the coffee in a local canteen. Only the enthusiast with a 
pure passion for organization derives a real thrill from 
the knowledge that ^'a Chapter is a geographical unit having 
jurisdiction over a county or large city" ; that ^4t is respon- 
sible for all Red Cross activities in its territory''; that it 
organizes this territory for convenience into Branches which 
miniature itself, and Auxiliaries which carry on one line of 
Red Cross service; that its officers and executive com- 
mittee are elected annually by all the members; that it 

23 



24 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

reports its activities in detail to one of the fourteen Division 
Headquarters; that it must be a complete miniature Red 
Cross with a committee in charge of every line of authorized 
Red Cross activity, so that the line of communication 
may remain unbroken from Washington to the members of 
the tiniest branch and none fail to respond to a national 
call for help. 

Dry as dust it seems on paper, with its analysis of adminis- 
trative committees (Development, Publicity, Finance) and 
productive committees (Chapter Production, Military Rehef , 
Home Service, Nursing Activities, Junior Membership), with 
its provision for dividing membership and subscription 
between local and national activities, yet the perfected 
machine is the triumph of hard work. It is a skillful com- 
promise between elasticity to local conditions and control 
from headquarters, and it was evolved under the tremendous 
pressure of war conditions, while new Chapters were being 
installed and veterans were running at top speed. 

Let it not be thought, however, that a Red Cross Chapter 
is merely a sublimated sewing circle. It is the applied 
humanity of its community. It represents the organized 
forces of friendliness and it applies them in ways as varied 
and as colorful as human need. Let me select as an example 
a call for supplies that was flashed underseas from a Red 
Cross outpost in some No Man's Land of want ! Divided 
and subdivided it sped unerringly along the familiar lines 
from Headquarters to Division, to Chapter, to Branch, to 
Auxiliary until in the folds of a hundred hills, along mar- 
shaled city blocks, at village cross-roads each item of that 
order busied the hard-earned leisure of a woman's hands. 
Or, a depot-master who reported a troop-train headed east 
and four hours late; though it was in the weary dead of 
night the Motor Corps brought the Canteeners to the tracks 
on time to hand out coffee and sandwiches, postal cards, and 
words of cheer. Under cover of laconic entries in the pro- 



THE COMRADESHIP 25 

duction reports, '^Christmas bags, 500,000,'' '^Repairing 
1,000,000 socks," the women in the Chapter workrooms 
mothered a miUion boys in camp. Did the Government ask 
for nurses or fruit-pits or tin-foil or platinum, then forth 
from Chapter Headquarters went campaigners, speakers, 
posters, to rake the highways and byways for recruits. The 
invisible cohorts of the comradeship rode east and west and 
north and south along the winding ways of all the world, 
drawing a cordon of safety around the dooryards of home, 
spreading the wisdom of physical well-being, and guarding 
the hearth fires of those who had gone to war. 

Chapter members had a great deal of hard work during 
the war and very little glamour. But to those who would 
see visions and dream dreams Centreville and its thousand 
counterparts were just behind the trenches. They were 
the Red Cross bases for money, for supplies, and for inspira- 
tion. To such souls all the rest of the organization was 
merely the line of communication that Hnked them to a 
hundred fronts. 

Woman's classic part in war is to send her men away with 
a smile and then wait. Somewhere she must find the 
strength to bear that waiting ; the women of the Great War 
found it in the countless workrooms of the Red Cross. In 
the concourses of railroad terminals, in department stores, 
and in hastily transformed offices, in Sunday Schools, and in 
Hbraries the quiet, white-garbed women sat with flying 
fingers and thoughts that kept pace with the swift whir of 
machines turning out the endless yards of gauze and cotton 
for the war-locked lines in France. This is the freemasonry 
of woman, this white magic that they weave to shield their 
men from harm, laying innumerable folds of gauze and 
cotton between them and the bayonet thrusts. 

The workrooms in action little suggested the house of 
dreams. The long, white-covered tables, the lines of busy 
sewing machines, the shining rows of bandage rollers and 



26 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

knitting machines, the shelves piled with materials, the 
business-like officials checking out supplies and recording 
finished work suggested the humming shops of a great 
factory. They were found wherever people most congre- 
gated; but whether they shared tall office buildings with 
lawyers and business firms or elbowed the general store and 
the post-office on the village main street, they wore the 
same aura of up-to-date efficiency. The demand was for 
expert workmanship and skill in many intricate processes, 
and this the irregular workers developed to a high degree. 

New methods and machines were invented under the 
high pressure of demand in this new craft. Cotton had a 
double war use for munitions and surgical dressings, and 
because in that grim game the guns took precedence over 
the hospitals, sphagnum moss became in high favor in Red 
Cross workrooms. Tons of it were gathered in Maine, in 
eastern Canada, and the Northwest. Its absorbent quali- 
ties are so great that when water is poured upon the sphag- 
num compress it expands to twice its thickness before the 
under layer of muslin shows a trace of moisture. The prep- 
aration of the moss was a tedious process until a woman 
solved the problem by constructing a six-foot ferris wheel 
hung with open air trays. In the big workrooms these 
machines were set up, the current switched on and the 
wheel left to do its time-saving work in the electric heat of the 
drying room. 

Nor is knitting any longer of the feminine gender! A 
new hand-machine, turning out socks at a shocking rate, 
has made hundreds of men and boys successful rivals of 
the ^'knit two, purl two,'' brigade. It turns out a pair of 
socks in twenty-five minutes, and can be adjusted to any 
size or length. One millionaire groceryman spent his 
mornings in a New York workroom ribbing and turning 
heels with the ease and precision of a veteran. 

Even chemistry played its part in the Red Cross opera- 



THE COMRADESHIP 27 

tions. When linen and cotton materials for bandages and 
dressings were scarce in the market, an immense reserve 
was found in the drafting-rooms of manufacturers and 
architects. Here were great quantities of discarded cloth 
which had to be treated with diastase to remove the drawing 
ink and transparent dressing. Great laundry plants volun- 
teered to handle the bulk of this work, but in many places 
Red Cross workers set up emergency laboratories in their 
own washrooms. 

It has been estimated by some genius that to this 
work, after America went to war, two million hours 
were given, — two hundred and thirty years of labor com- 
pressed into eighteen months! Whatever the actual 
time the record totals an enormous sacrifice of rest, of 
pleasure, of food, and sometimes even of sleep. Some 
of those hours represented spare moments between trains 
or unexpected lulls in a shopping tour; the bulk of 
them were hard wrung from busy lives. They stood 
for condensed housekeeping, foresworn frivolities, shortened 
lunch hours, night work volunteered by factory girls 
when the day's business was done. Miles of material 
passed under their busy hands. Every month they put 
a five-and-three-quarter-inch girdle of gauze around the 
globe; they used two and a half million pounds of wool. 
Here was the most marvelous factory the world has ever 
known : it kept no hours, and it knew no payroll. Its 
shops were erected in every crowded mart and on every 
country byway, in the Chicago loop, and in icebound Alaskan 
villages. The limit of its production was never reached, 
yet every item in its output was known and controlled in 
one white marble building — the National Red Cross Head- 
quarters in Washington. The evolution of that system is a 
monument to the energy and the self-discipline of the Amer- 
ican women. 

In the wake of the first staggering news of war in Europe 



28 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

came tales of awful suffering for want of bandages and 
dressings. The report that wounds were being covered 
with sawdust and newspaper sent pitying fingers hurrying 
to their task; and when with winter came the demand for 
socks and sweaters to expel the biting cold of the trenches, 
little groups of workers bravely started out to explore the 
unknown field of surgical dressings and refugee garments. 
The Red Cross had issued directions for their making, but 
almost anything was acceptable. Women made what they 
could, or what rumor reported to be right. With the result 
that wherever two or three women were gathered together, a 
new line of models arose. The Red Cross undertook to 
forward gifts to any designated country, and a motley 
stream of packing boxes passed through the New York 
warehouse. During two and a half years of divided senti- 
ment, seething under official neutrality, eighteen thousand 
donors, individuals, ladies' clubs, charitable organizations, 
and Red Cross Chapters appear regularly on the record 
of shipments received. Seventy-five thousand big packages 
went overseas. But by April, 1917, a little order was coming 
out of the chaos. Classes in making surgical dressings 
had been established, and trained instructors were now 
directing the output in Chapter workrooms. In spite of 
individualistic tendencies a compress from Kansas was, 
obviously, now of the same family as a compress from New 
Jersey. 

On April 30, the first foreign order was ticked off at 
Washington: ''Ask Chapters for four hundred thousand 
pairs woolen socks and unlimited supplies hospital garments 
and clothing.'^ At last a direct line of communication to 
the front was established. This first haphazard stock of 
supplies was built up under the pressure of imminent un- 
gauged demand ; during the war, a call from overseas was 
answered promptly without apparent effort. Often it was 
only a matter of shipping a certain number of packing cases 



THE COMRADESHIP 29 

from the piled reserves in an export warehouse. Segregated 
by size and kind in uniform boxes, duly inspected, recorded, 
and labeled, garments, bandages, and socks moved in orderly 
ways from thirty thousand workrooms, through division 
inspectors and export stations, by train and ocean liner, to 
the Jong line of warehouses that paralleled the Western 
front. 

How the system was slowly perfected and strengthened 
in every link is told in a slim folder, of varicolored forms, 
filed under '^Foreign Requisitions" in the cable office at 
National Headquarters. 

Following the blue sheet bearing the first request for 
"unlimited quantities'^ comes the Chapters' answer. Many 
yellow pages are written close with the serial numbers of 
packing cases invariably headed by the formal statement, 
'^United States Transport sailing recently New York 
carried French shipment number 000." Soon the Com- 
mission was measuring its needs and weighing the relative 
merits of bandages and pinafores. In the same files under 
date of August 17th appears the following: "No more 
shipments from United States without specific request from 
France." This, by the way, did not mean a halt in pro- 
duction ; it meant that the situation was so serious and the 
demand so urgent that to avoid confusion and duplication 
they would determine what was most needed and the 
order in which it should come. 

When the Red Cross Commission — those pioneers 
facing immense and unknown needs — sailed for France 
in June, they made preparations for yet unsolved contin- 
gencies. In France an endless stream of gray ambulances 
poured wounded men into army hospitals, and refugees 
fled empty-handed from the battle-zone. Here, back home, 
American soldiers were entering the first stage of their 
journey to the front. These things the Commission knew. 
But if heretofore they had failed to plumb the capacity of 



30 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

the Chapter supply system they soon began to send enough 
specific requests to satisfy the most enthusiastic Chapter. 

In September the right of way was given to surgical 
dressings and hospital supplies. In December the ratio of 
need was stated as seventy-five hospital to twenty-five 
refugee garments. By July, 1918, the veteran Commission 
had an accurate finger on the pulse of France. '' Require- 
ments for Military and Hospital Purposes for six months 
following '^ headed an order of six million items. 

Meantime details of transportation were straightened 
out. After November, 1917, drains and bed socks and 
boys' corduroy trousers were no longer permitted to consort 
fraternally in ^'miscellaneous cases,'' but were ruthlessly 
sorted and packed in uninteresting uniformity with their 
kind. In the spring, the cases themselves were put into 
uniform. The familiar insignia and a three-inch diagonal 
red stripe on sides and ends proclaimed their source and 
destination. The piled boxes on the wharves of France were 
all of a size, dictated by the door space of the French box- 
car. The serial number stenciled on each was the key to 
its recorded march from a far-away workroom to fill its 
allotted 2X2X3 niche in the need of France. 

''Bales or cases" became the subject most discussed in 
shipping circles. Cargo space was precious and cloth bulked 
smaller than wood, with the result that a few experimental 
bales were dispatched on sea voyages to test out various 
wrappings, fastenings, and markings. 

Cabled orders read like ciphers. They referred to all 
items in Chapter production by their code numbers. This 
was the last step in a discipline of detail that spoke of the 
delicate balance of need and supply. Early in 1917 the Red 
Cross sent representatives to find out by personal investi- 
gation what surgeons and nurses in army hospitals wanted 
in the way of hospital supplies ; and what size sheet was best 
for the regulation bed; also what length nightshirt fitted 



THE COMRADESHIP 31 

the regulation patient, and what form of surgical dressings 
came most readily to hand in the operating room. They 
also went from station to station behind the lines, to 
learn what kind of clothes refugees liked best to wear. 
Their findings, coded and crystallized in exact directions 
and patterns, were later in every Red Cross workroom. 
Number 453 became precisely the same thing in Evian and 
Palestine and Akron, Ohio. Every American worker knew 
that the awkward, unbelievable ugly garment she fashioned 
would be beautiful in the eyes of some refugee, a familiar 
link with the past, a tiny balance wheel in a life wrenched 
from its moorings and adrift in the backwash of war. 

In the first month of 1918, two thousand packing cases 
of supplies were coming in daily from the Chapters. The 
workers had struck their pace. New recruits were gathered 
daily as reports came in of Americans in the trenches, and 
production soared. The average monthly production in 
1917 was six miUion; in 1918, it was thirty-one miUion. 
Up to September 30, 1918, 275,000,000 articles made by 
the women and children in the Red Cross had been sent 
overseas. The bulk of them, 250,000,000 in round num- 
bers, followed the United States transports to France; 
the balance carried their message of comfort and good cheer 
to Italy, England, Serbia, Russia, and Palestine. 

But, although the shuttle of their thoughts moved through 
a woof of many lands, the Red Cross women did not forget 
the cantonments that had sprung up at their gates. Their 
Christmas bags replaced the familiar Christmas stockings 
in the great barracks ; their socks and sweaters and wristlets 
warmed the waning enthusiasm of many a novice in winter- 
camping. What more fitting than that they should do the 
army mending? In June, 1918, the Red Cross officially 
took over this duty from the Army quartermasters. In this 
transaction red tape was conspicuous by its absence. The 
privilege was restricted to those localities that boasted 



32 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

camps and quartermaster depots. The clothes, which 
included everything that a soldier wears, were delivered 
clean, but ragged, to the workrooms. They presented vivid 
examples of what one man could do to a perfectly good 
uniform, given perseverance and the facihties of army life. 
The garments that averaged more square feet of holes than 
material were cut up for patches. Thread and buttons 
came with the consignment ; the magic of flying fingers 
did the rest. Trial lots of 5000 were issued to each Division 
in June ; within thirty days 500,000 garments of every size 
and kind had been returned to respectability. One Division 
rehabilitated 150,000 on its first order. Sometimes mend- 
ing was a blanket term for complete transformations. Wit- 
ness 96,000 collarless white shirts, opening in the back, 
that strayed into Northern Division workrooms and emerged 
a short time thereafter dyed, collared, cuffed, opening in 
the front, regulation O.D.'s. By November 1, 1918, more 
than one and a half million garments had passed in and out 
of the Red Cross mending bag. 

The volunteer supply system was organized. As nearly 
as it was humanly possible every garment was made 
exactly like its model. Moreover, the same number of 
rolls or compresses was exacted from every yard of gauze, 
and workrooms turned out no more and no less than their 
accepted quotas. All materials were bought through the 
Central Supply Department at Washington and issued from 
Division warehouses on requisition. The constantly de- 
pleted reserves in the export warehouses were as constantly 
replaced by a steady, unhurried procession of uniform cases, 
each one containing one size of one article. These were 
factory methods indeed ! One would say that production 
had become automatic. But let an emergency throw open 
the throttle and the '^ machine'^ responded with an elasticity 
of effort, a determination to accomplish the impossible 
that is the greatest birthright of human genius. 



THE COMRADESHIP 33 

One day an army consignment went astray and a trans- 
port was sailing minus its equipment of siu-gical dressings. 
Could the Red Cross help ? The appeal came at 11 : 00 a.m. 
At two that afternoon the ship was on her way ^^over there," 
with the requisite number of Red Cross boxes stored in her 
hold. When the influenza epidemic reached the United 
States on its westward journey, the Red Cross Chapters 
turned out 1,250,000 germ-proof masks in two weeks. One 
day an S. 0. S. call came into central Headquarters. Con- 
tagion was rampant in an Iowa camp and the hospital must 
have ward masks. Chicago had none on hand, but she knew 
where they were to be had, and in three days, twenty thou- 
sand of the precious filters were on their way from a northern 
neighbor. The thirty thousand and more Red Cross work- 
rooms were cogs in a great machine, but it was a human 
mechanism, welded from miUions of heads and hearts and 
hands. 

The women of America from the day they first took up 
the burden of war to October 1, 1918, made and packed and 
shipped 253,000,000 surgical dressings ; 22,000,000 articles 
of hospital suppHes; 14,000,000 sweaters, socks, comfort 
bags, etc., for soldiers and sailors, and 1,000,000 refugee 
garments — 291,000,000 pledges that America's women were 
right behind the flag. The value of this gift cannot be 
measured by its bulk nor by the $60,000,000 or more that 
it would bring in open market. The manner of its giving 
put it beyond price. It was a splendid gesture of courage, 
faith and love, commensurate only to the human misery 
it has lessened, the human courage it had stiffened to '^ carry 
on'' against all odds. The Httle red labels sewed into every 
chapter-made garment carried the propaganda of good will 
around the world. 

The gray imiforms of the Red Cross Motor Corps were a 
famihar sight in the streets of many cities. Between six 
and seven thousand women were enrolled in the Chapters' 



34 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

transportation system. In trucks and ambulances and in 
their own cars they went about the Chapters' business; 
they carried workers and food to and from the canteens; 
they hauled Chapter supplies and hospital patients and 
visiting personages. Their obedience to orders and their 
promptness in reporting for duty were as military as their 
imiforms. The Motor Corps was no place for faddists ; it 
was a working organization of skilled drivers and mechanics. 
The prerequisites for the first division of membership 
included a course in automobile mechanics, sanitary troop 
drill and first aid, a chauffeur's license, and physical examina- 
tion. The members gave at least sixteen hours' service a 
week. Local emergencies proved their spirit. During the 
influenza epidemic, many drivers stayed on their jobs twelve 
and fifteen hours a day and slept in the garages beside their 
cars. 

At seven hundred railroad junction points where troop 
trains stopped to take on coal and ice, Red Cross canteeners 
were always waiting to greet the cramped and train-weary 
men with something to add to their comfort. In winter, it 
was coffee and sandwiches; in summer, watermelon or ice 
cream. Newspapers, magazines, postal cards, and stamps 
were popular the year round. The gift, small as it was, 
embodied enough good fellowship to last till the next stop. 

The Red Cross is dedicated to the defeat of suffering. Its 
work in the face of actual disaster is the last stand of the 
battle. It begins in the Red Cross classes of instruction. 
The Chapter is the evangel of physical efficiency. Crys- 
tallized in three slim textbooks, '^ First- Aid," ^'Home Dietet- 
ics," *' Elementary Hygiene and Home Care of the Sick," 
there is enough simple knowledge to shield a whole com- 
munity from petty emergencies and the insidious encroach- 
ments of disease and dirt. First-aid classes were organized 
in January, 1910. In eight years, 85,257 certificates have 
been issued. First-aid contests are an annual event in 



THE COMRADESHIP 35 

many industrial plants. Sixty thousand women have 
learned to make their homes strongholds of healthy lives. 

Home Service — a strong hand holding hundreds of 
thousands of famihes from disintegration under the dead 
weight of war — may be a matter of economic and social 
laws among the file cases at Headquarters, but in the Chapter 
it resolves itself into individual problems in neighborliness, 
vivid with personality, inspired by loyalty to the absent 
soldiers of democracy. 

In April, 1917, the Red Cross had 555 Chapters. Most of 
them were in the Eastern States and in large cities. To-day 
3874 Chapters stand on the Red Cross rolls, and throughout 
the land there is no county that does not boast of at least 
one Auxiliary. The pre-war membership of 486,394 is 
lost in the mighty army of men and women, boys and girls, 
who answer with 30,000,000 voices to the Red Cross roll 
call. Sixteen million joined during one week of the 1917 
Christmas drive. 

The rallying of the comradeship is, indeed, one of the great 
romances of democracy. Millionaire and miner, red Indian, 
white man, and negro marched shoulder to shoulder in the 
army of mercy. One of the most stirring chapters in the 
whole series is the tale of the Fourteenth Division. When we 
entered the war, it was felt that through the Red Cross 
these exiled Americans scattered around the globe might 
help do their bit. As a result, the roll calls of the Red 
Cross echoed from Cairo to Vladivostok and from Buenos 
Ayres to Tokio. In its workrooms thousands of more or 
less homesick Americans felt closer to the state than they 
had for many years. In Porto Rico and Hawaii, in the 
Philippines and Guam and the Virgin Islands, men, 
women, and little children found a new meaning to their 
American citizenship. 

Incidentally, it gives me great pleasure to state that when 
we figured up the result of our second appeal to the country 



36 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

for another $100,000,000, which resulted in a total sub- 
scription of more than $182,000,000, we found that the 
Fourteenth Division had contributed $1,700,000 to this 
fund, which meant that the Fourteenth Division had gone 
over six times its quota. 

One thing more : in less than a year the scattered Chapters 
of the Fourteenth Division turned in a million and a half 
dollars' worth of supplies, knitted goods from China and 
Chile, surgical dressings from Brazil and Spain, tons of 
guava jelly from Porto Rico destined for French hospitals, 
and Havana cigars and cigarettes from Cuba. Red Cross 
work also was carried on in the little island of Exuma — a 
scrap of land not to be found on most maps. In Costa 
Rica twenty knitters called for the second hundred dollar 
lot of wool in four months, and knitting needles being scarce 
they made their own from cocobolo wood. The Fourteenth 
Division planted the outposts of the American Red Cross 
around the world. 



CHAPTER IV 

WOEK FOR THE SOLDIER AT HOME 

Aim of the Government — Relation of the Department of Military Re- 
lief to the Army — Service at Railroad Stations — Numbers of Can- 
teens — New Work for Women — Death to a Libel — Canteen 
Functions Defined by Army Orders — Canteen Records — Washing- 
ton Union Station Canteen — Many-sided Service — One Month's 
Statistics — Sanitary Branch of the Service — Camp Service — Red 
Cross Field Director. 

THE United States Government started out with the 
definite intent that the American soldier should be the 
best conditioned, the best fed, and the best cared-for soldier 
in the world ; the verdict of a proud and grateful people is that 
the Government, taking everything into consideration, came 
very near to realizing its purpose. In truth, the fitness and 
fighting qualities of these men — men who a year before had 
been shuffling along in a thousand-and-one different trades 
— proved to be the happiest as well as the biggest surprise 
of the war to tired and disheartened Europe. 

In lending a hand to the Army, cooperation between the 
Red Cross and the Government was necessarily close but, 
oddly enough, no phase of our work is less known than the 
almost herculean labor undertaken on behalf of the soldier. 

To a large number of people the military work of the Red 
Cross is personified in the figure of a girl in khaki passing 
out coffee and sandwiches to grinning soldiers who, already, 
look a hundred per cent nourished. This trite picture does 
not begin to tell the story. The soldier himself, unless he 
be a very thoughtful and observant man, does not know 

37 ' 



88 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

how strongly and at how many points and angles the Red 
Cross has influenced his mental attitude, his moral conduct, 
and his physical condition. 

Reference has been made to the departmental organization 
of the Red Cross and the distribution of its duties incident 
to war. Moreover, it may be unnecessary to add that the 
men and women engaged in all these various departments 
were, every one, convinced that their own department was 
the biggest and most vital; but it was this conviction, 
nevertheless, that inspired their work and actuated the 
whole machine. It is also true that as we follow the soldier 
on his long journey to the battleground, and back again, 
each stage as it is passed seems to yield in importance to 
the next. 

In all the formative stage of the soldier^s development and, 
for that matter, at every step of his service, of all the depart- 
ments of the Red Cross that of Military Relief was closest 
to him. In his cosmos that department and no other com- 
prised the Red Cross. 

A large part of the work of the department of Military 
Relief was merged in the Medical Service of the Army. The 
base hospitals with their personnel, which were organized 
and equipped by the Red Cross as part of its official business, 
became automatically a part of the Army organization 
when they were sent into service overseas. There re- 
mained under Red Cross administration, for the purpose 
of utility and to simplify the Army mechanism, the bureaus 
whose sphere was broader and more elastic and whose func- 
tions were not an actual part of the war-making business. 
They were, in a way, the left hand of the service. Under 
this head may be grouped the Bureau of Canteens, the 
Bureau of Camp Service, the Bureau of Motor Service, 
and the Bureau of Sanitary Service. 

The American boy — up to forty-five — bumped into the 
Red Cross at the very moment almost of leaving his home 



WORK FOR THE SOLDIER AT HOME 39 

door for the training camp. The last thing he saw from the 
train as the old town faded behind him was the Red Cross 
girl he had known from babyhood, waving good-by ; and at 
the first station were a group of Red Cross girls to let him 
know that the folks back home Were not the only ones who 
cared. 

Here is where the illustrative instances begin, showing 
how this Red Cross factor pervading every stage in the work 
of soldier-building made for a general cleaning-up. It is 
related that in the early days of the war the mayor of a 
western town in the exuberance of his feelings presented each 
man of the town's draft quota with a bottle of whisky for 
''deoch an' doris." The next station was a canteen town 
where Red Cross women waited to welcome the troop train. 
When the Red Cross report of that visitation reached the 
War Department the instant reaction was the brassard on 
the sleeve of every drafted man, and then€eforth it was a 
penitentiary offense to give or sell him intoxicants. 

Dm:ing the early period of mobilization it was not reahzed 
that the services of the Red Cross would be needed at rail- 
road stations. But when the railroads began to feel the 
strain of moving hundreds of thousands of troops, and trains 
began to be late, the inevitable emergencies arose : it was 
not enough to have Army dining-rooms at regular intervals 
along the route but the Red Cross must be ready to feed and 
take care of the men at all stations. Secretary Baker's 
request that the Red Cross take over this work acted like 
magic on the women of America. The whole nation was 
mobilized overnight. 

And so it was that when the armistice was signed there 
were in the United States 781 canteens where 70,000 women 
with military organizations were doing yeoman service. 
They not only gave the soldier a lift when he needed it, but 
they themselves discovered a new meaning in service and 
came to the knowledge that Hfe is real and that there is 



40 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

beauty in its reality. There were women scrubbing floors 
in Red Cross canteens who had never done a day's work 
before in their lives. But the thought that they were helping 
made them happy. 

^ When the canteen women at one of our debarkation ports 
were first called upon to take care of the wounded men, who 
had now begun to come back from war, they said they 
couldn't stand the awfulness of it. But they did. The 
cheerfulness of these poor fellows shamed them into self- 
sacrifice. Forgetfulness of self strengthened these women's 
characters and illumined their souls. In the change that 
war service has brought to the women of America, many 
an old fetish has gone by the board. 

The incident described in the following letter from a 
canteen worker in Charlotte, N. C, and of which there 
were many similar occurrences all through the Southern 
States after America went to war, shows that the Red 
Cross is not a thing of race or color and should be the last 
word of proof of this growth in patriotism : — 

"To-day we had a fine example of discipline and its value. Thirty 
colored sailors stopped at the Canteen hut. When we went to serve them 
they were drawn up in two lines and stood at attention. As if with one 
voice, they said, 'To the Red Cross,' and saluted. As we passed down the 
line, each man as he was served removed his hat and bowed, but did not 
speak. After all were served, they sang all sorts of songs, gave a rousing 
cheer for our Country, the Red Cross and Charlotte Canteen. It was 
one of the most affecting experiences we have had and our Chairman went 
back to the hut and cried. These men had crossed the ocean eleven 
times." 

The war and the canteen sounded the knell of one ancient 
fallacy that should long ago have been laid to rest. In order 
to insure prompt supply of needed food or special service 
that the canteen could furnish, the troop train commander 
wired his requisition to the coromanding officer of the next 
canteen ahead. This involved imparting a knowledge of 
the movement of troops, which had been rehgiously guarded 



WORK FOR THE SOLDIER AT HOME 41 

to forestall the ubiquitous alien enemy and his secret wireless. 
The service oath of the canteen worker bound her not to 
disclose this knowledge to ''a living soul.'' For centuries 
fathers have inculcated in their sons the belief that a woman 
cannot keep a secret. It is a matter of record that seventy 
thousand women dispelled this fallacy. In war time loyalty 
becomes a religion. 

' The vital importance of the Canteen Service of the Red 
Cross can be realized from the reliance of the War Depart- 
ment upon it for all sorts of emergency work essential to 
the rapid transportation of troops. The soldier's need of 
food and drink was reason enough for the canteen; but 
the Army orders to troop-train commanders and canteen 
officers, defining the canteen functions and outlining its 
use, confirmed its value as a wheel in the great mechanism. 
This, like every other department of the Red Cross, did the 
things which the Army could not do without slowing down 
the business of war. The Red Cross could be depended 
upon to find a short cut, if there was one, to the furtherance 
of its ends. |Its service was not confined to the maintenance 
of good spirit by providing soldiers with food, tobacco, 
newspapers, postal cards to keep in touch with home, 
shower baths, recreation grounds, medical supplies, and other 
aids to comfort ; on telegraphic order from the troop-train 
commander the canteen provided supplies of all kinds, 
whether commissary or medical, and lodging and meals 
where needed. It is not treason to say that Army stores 
sometimes go wrong — in fact, it would be strange indeed 
if such were not the case. There have been instances where 
detachments of soldiers have rolled into canteen stations 
without having had a bite to eat or a sup to drink through a 
long weary, empty day. \ 

j But there are other untoward things that happened. 
The Army called further on the canteens to arrange for 
surgeon, dentist, or physician to meet trains on wired re- 



42 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

quest; it authorized them to accept sick or even dead 
men for transfer, and to give receipt for them to the officer 
in command. There were miHtary books of instruction 
covering all this service and every train commander had 
one. They listed all the canteen stations along their 
route on every railroad, indicating the equipment of each 
in detail and the service it was able to provide. There 
were voluminous Army orders covering in minute particular 
the procedure for the soldier who was left behind or missed 
his troop train while on furlough or in transit, and for the 
Red Cross in giving help to him. These orders also provided 
for the disposition of all sick or injured soldiers who might 
be turned over to the Red Cross at canteen stations ; the 
contingency of a soldier's death, the care of his remains and 
the notification of his family were likewise prescribed in 
detail.; Here entered the Red Cross Bureau of Home 
Service, which is another important story. 

These things were not mere possibilities, but actually 
came to pass. Forty-five canteens in the Southern States 
during the month of August furnished medical treatment 
to 1180 men and 22 were removed to hospitals, either 
military or civil. For record of all removals of men from 
trains, whether living or dead, there were transfer slips 
in duplicate with all details regarding the soldier, his 
service record, his malady, and the hospital to which he 
was dispatched. By these records the train commander 
accounted to the War Department for his missing. Simul- 
taneously, cards were sent to the Communications and Home 
Service officers who, forthwith, established relations with 
the soldier's family and summoned them, if he happened to 
be dangerously ill. 

There was a wide range of facilities offered by the more 
important canteens in various parts of the country. In 
large towns where there were big chapter organizations and 
war enthusiasm ran high, elaborate equipment was installed 






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WORK FOR THE SOLDIER AT HOME 43 

for bathing and, in some places, for swimming, and the 
menu of refreshments sent back home on the Red Cross 
postal cards made the home folk think that soldiering was 
an easy life after all. In many ways, the most noteworthy 
canteen in the country was that in the Washington Union 
Station. It was formerly the presidential suite, but was 
given over by President Wilson at the beginning of the 
war. Its spacious reception room, conference rooms, 
and offices, were filled daily with way-bound soldiers. 
There were refectory-rooms, reading-rooms, lounging-rooms, 
and all sorts of rooms for the doughboy, who was wont to idle 
in the station at night waiting for the early train to bear 
him away. There were baths and sleeping places near at 
hand where he could go if he wished. 

This service of the canteens was many sided : it not only 
made the soldier comfortable but it kept him from the 
station-saloon and other temptations of the night, and went 
further than most people know towards keeping him clean 
and straight and ready for his big job. In the great inland 
stations like Chicago, this service had almost no boundaries. 
Through the confusion, incident to war preparations, it 
happened, frequently, that the men traveling from the 
Atlantic coast to far western posts found that their tickets 
read to Chicago only and money for the remainder of the 
journey was, likewise, lacking. Here again the Red Cross 
stepped in to feed and send the men on their way. 

In almost every canteen of consequence there was a 
surgical ward — a neat little hospital equipped for as many 
as ten or twelve men and a doctor who, without a summons, 
was patriotic enough to meet the troop trains on the 
chance that some soldier might need him. 

The intimate stories of canteens that are ''different," 
in all parts of the country, would make a huge volume. 
There were college girls who set up extraordinary canteens 
in university boathouses that were equipped with every- 



44 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

thing under the sun ; there were canteens that were famous 
all over France for certain articles of food, and were a 
pleasant memory through trying days. The Staten Island 
canteen at Tompkinsville Naval Station was known, 
probably, in every port for ^'pie like mother used to 
make." Little branches and auxiliaries off the main lines 
of travel which never saw the passing show but were none 
the less eager to help along, baked, canned, and pickled 
all manner of things, and the Motor Corps girls came 
and toted the output to the railroad. The whole busi- 
ness was developed in an astonishingly brief space of 
time. Who, in pre-war days, would have thought of classes 
in the art of ^'handing out lunches on the fly" ? 

Speed, indeed, was the order of the day. When the 
detachment of fifty men tumbled into a canteen without 
notice and empty as drums they were fed nights, days, and 
Sundays; and when the Sergeant with a dozen sick men 
asked for invalid food the Motor Corps '^ hustled it up." 
And then there was the newly married man from the hill 
country and his weeping, girl- wife who had just learned 
that she could not follow her man to war and who lacked 
the wherewithal to purchase a ticket back home ; needless 
to say the ticket was placed in her hands and everything 
done to send her more cheerfully on her way. On the 
Hoboken docks, one rainy night, the Canteen Chief found 
a hundred or more soldiers who had come from the war to 
train new troops. They had no food, no money, and no- 
where to go — not even the solace of a smoke. When that 
company got up from a large hot meal and a long cigar, 
and had slept and breakfasted and had a ticket for their 
destination, there were a hundred odd more men who knew 
something of what the Red Cross meant. 

In the station at Goldsboro, N. C, was a soldier on 
crutches who had finished with war and was making his 
slow way home. When the canteener learned that he had 



WORK FOR THE SOLDIER AT HOME 45 

come through the fighting of Chateau-Thierry, she gathered 
the men, five hundred of them, from the next troop train, 
and got him to make them a speech. That voice, straight 
from the front, sent them away cheering madly and vowing 
to square him with the Kaiser. 

Altogether it is wonderful record of service. There is no 
way of telling half its story. Statistics, which are more or 
less unconvincing, have only recently reached the stage of 
compilation, but one month's figures from only about forty 
odd per cent of the canteens of the United States, tell this 
interesting tale : — • 

Men served 2,416,000 

Sick aided 2,552 

Removed to hospital 83 

Value of supplies requisitioned $9,950 

Value of supplies furnished free $81,890 

Postals distributed 1,215,000 

Cigarettes distributed 2,140,000 

Canteen workers 17,168 

Canteens reporting 267 

Canteens not reporting 399 

The Sanitary branch of the service was efficacious in 
meeting emergencies, and the things it did, while they do 
not appear outwardly as service to the soldier, none the 
less reacted upon him in the largest way possible. An 
illustrative one was the work which was done at one of 
the Army Camps. Camps, it may be well to admit, were 
not always located in ideal places, not always where the 
Army would have put them if it alone had had the choosing. 
This particular camp had a swamp beside it — a swamp 
where the highly armored mosquito made merry on his 
rounds, delivering malaria to any unlucky human whom 
fortune might send his way. To the Army Staff it was plain 
enough that the swamp spelled trouble in capital letters, 
unless it were promptly drained. Yet in the statutes there 



46 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

was a stubborn little law, born no doubt of the iniquitous 
land juggling of early days in the West, which forbade the 
improvement of private property at public expense. But 
there was no law to keep the Red Cross from doing the job, 
which it proceeded promptly to do, the cost of which was 
$7000. In the opinion of the Surgeon General's Office, 
this work forestalled an epidemic which was positively 
scheduled^to appear in the spring and which would have laid 
on the Army a continual tax in man power and expense. 

This Sanitary Service, which was conducted as an adjunct 
to the Federal Department of Public Health and in co- 
operation with the state and local health boards, and which 
shared their powers under state law, was indeed one of the 
most fundamental and omnipresent of all Red Cross activi- 
ties for the preservation of Army health. It did not doctor 
sick soldiers; the Army did that. But Sanitary Service 
went further back : it doctored the country for five miles 
around the camps; it diagnosed the fields and streams 
and ferreted out behind the camouflage of landscape the 
hidden machine guns of disease, which in one summer can 
shoot an Army cantonment full of holes ; it ditched the sink- 
holes and swamps that breed and harbor the carriers; it 
sprayed with fatal oils the streams and ponds and ditches 
on thousands of ancient and diseaseful well-curbs and 
sounded the death knell of the ^'Old Oaken Bucket.'^ It 
put old vaults where they could no longer spread sickness ; 
it combed the stables of near-by farmers with a rigorous 
hand and drove them into at least the ^'B ^'grade, or else 
out of business. Dirty or tuberculous milk simply could 
not be sold to soldiers. Nor were unsanitary conditions 
allowed to prevail where food was served: A restaurant 
keeper who had a military policeman before his door for 
a week warning soldiers away was a poor bookkeeper in 
not discerning the business wisdom of cleaning house. 

To-day, the Sanitary Service maintains medical inspectors 



WORK FOR THE SOLDIER AT HOME 47 

of schools and homes and even churches. It vaccinates 
everybody who needs it. The Pubhc Health Department's 
nurses — all graduates — are promptly available for com- 
bating epidemics. For bacteriological purposes there are 
laboratories, sometimes newly established for the emergency. 
And to safeguard against a crying need the Red Cross has 
furnished at substantial cost four laboratory cars which, 
the English sanitarians and car builders agree, are the last 
word in point of convenience and equipment. These can 
be hooked on to fast trains and delivered on the front of an 
epidemic's advance, civil or military, with amazing alacrity. 

Thus, on every side the soldier was guarded against all 
that had in it any potential possibility of injury to his health, 
and the sanitary forces which were combined for the physical 
protection of the army camps built up health organizations 
of the highest order all over the United States. In many 
lines, standards were established and methods of purification 
set up which will outlast all wars. 

In our supersensitive land we have a fashion of side- 
stepping reference to what we term social disease. If the 
Army had been as squeamish there would have been a 
different story told in the Saint Mihiel salient. The Public 
Health authorities and the Red Cross Bureau of Sanitation, 
as well as the War Department itself, recognizing in this 
thing a peril greater, even, than tuberculosis, laid hold on 
it barehanded. There are thirty-seven states now that 
have made venereal ailments reportable; whereas, at the 
beginning of the war there were but five. The program 
was to stamp out this thing at its source. The arm of 
military law is long : It reached into far villages that 
sent soldiers to the Army, and the Army lever to pry the 
truth from men is strong. The day is here when the dis- 
tributors of sex poison, professional or otherwise, will be 
put where they can no longer foul the nation's life. 

In the more wholesome field of Red Cross work for the 



48 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

soldier in camp, there was an activity that knew almost no 
rest and no limit. Keeping in close touch with the man 
from the time he landed within the reservation until he 
finished his training, it tried to make him bear in mind that 
it was there to help him get rid of his worries and to 
smooth his road. An unsung genius who saw how the 
thing worked out crystallized it in this stanza : — 

'Don't pack your troubles in your old kit bag, 
Tell 'em to the Red Cross man." 

That is the story in a very few words. The Red Cross 
built houses in all the thirty-nine camps at first established. 
When the war closed it had nurses' houses in connection with 
base hospitals in more than forty-two different camps, posts, 
and Army hospitals; it had convalescent houses in sixty- 
three military and naval establishments and rooms in others 
furnished for convalescent purposes. There were nearly 
six hundred men and women in the Camp Service offices, 
and fifty-nine directors doing communication service at 
base, general, naval, and embarkation hospitals. There 
were no large camps, posts, or stations for the training of 
soldiers, sailors, or marines not covered by the Bureau of 
Camp Service, and when peace came the small places were 
being added to the list as quickly as possible. 

It is difficult for the person who has never seen one of the 
great Army camps, with its miles of barracks and hospital 
buildings and warehouses, the far-reaching avenues and 
endless company streets, the brand-new drainage system, 
the garages and fire houses, commissary stores and officers' 
quarters, rest houses, mess quarters and remount buildings 
and all its innumerable housings of soldiery, to form a 
mental picture of the setting in which the Red Cross Head- 
quarters was located. Through all the hours of daylight 
the movement never ceased. It was an endless reel of 
motion filled with the burly, brown figures of a man popula- 
tion, and the air vibrated with their clatter. There was the 



WORK FOR THE SOLDIER AT HOME 49 

rhythmic beat of tramping recruits, going through the ever- 
lasting evolutions of drill, and the murmur of many voices. 
There were individual figures '^hay footing" to and fro on 
a thousand errands, working detachments whose blue 
'' rompers" were almost a foreign note in the khaki sym- 
phony, mule-teams, trucks, and commissary-wagons, loads of 
hay and loads of drain pipes, tents, and supplies — every- 
body going somewhere and doing some one thing. Scattered 
everywhere, singly or in groups, were soldiers, soldiers, 
soldiers. The thought that every soldier lazing down the 
road, every disconsolate mule browsing on the scanty 
herbage, every single thing, animate or inanimate, was a 
duly recognized and numbered item in either the personnel 
or the furnishing of an Army summoned up a vision of 
bookkeeping which staggered the imagination. 

Let no one imagine that the day of the Red Cross Field 
Director at any busy Army camp was a day of rest. He 
was the officer in command of Red Cross activities at every 
camp and cantonment. There was no busier man on the 
premises, and the fact that he worked for nothing never 
seemed to slow him down. Moreover, the qualification 
test that he had to pass to get the job was not an easy one : 
tact, caution, initiative, calmness, firmness, and persistency 
were a part of his necessary equipment — he need be many 
types of men all in one. 

There were no bankers' hours in the Camp Service. The 
camp turned out at six when the Red Cross man was on his 
job mapping out the day's work, examining and preparing 
to fulfill orders from the camp commandant or the chief 
surgeon, going through a mail that was full of Home Service 
problems, a hundred individual cases, official communica- 
tions, and *^axes to grind." There might be requests for 
help in securing discharges, for the Red Cross — with its 
facilities for investigation and its standing with the War 
Department — could present the story of a man who had 

E 



50 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

a just claim for release as well as for the man who had no 
claim and had yet to learn the hopelessness of asking to be 
released. There were always a lot of private messes that 
were coming up for settlement, domestic complications, 
legitimate and otherwise. The draft brought to light more 
bigamy than the law could ever punish. It brought one 
soldier face to face in many a camp with two wives and often 
with more. There were reunions in Red Cross camp head- 
quarters of several families with only one head. It would 
take Solomon and Haroun-al-Raschid rolled into one to 
adjust in these cases the questions of insurance and allot- 
ment. The Red Cross Director was not a judge, but he 
was asked more than once to sentence a foolish soldier to 
matrimony. 

In forty-four of the camps throughout the country the 
Red Cross built big cruciform convalescent houses to give the 
sick or wounded soldier, who was on the mend, a lift up the 
hill — a cheerful place to flee to in his daytime horn's to 
escape the sight of sick men and medicine bottles, of tem- 
perature charts, the paraphernalia of surgery, and the smell 
of ether and iodoform. It was a great thing for a man who, 
with the help of nurses and doctors, had won a long uphill 
fight against death, to be transferred into a big cheerful 
place with couches and steamer chairs and sunshine, with 
cards and checkers, with curtains and flowering things, 
where the Library Association furnished him with the latest 
best-seller, where the magazines and newspapers were handy 
to restore his touch with American life, where he could 
smoke and swap yarns, and where his mother or his sister, 
his wife or his best girl could have a pleasant reception when 
she came to see him. It cost money to build these houses, 
but they were worth it. 

Then there was the warehousing in connection with Red 
Cross administration in a big camp. There was all the 
trucking and handUng and requisitioning. Sweaters? A 



WORK FOR THE SOLDIER AT HOME 51 

big packing case held a great many. A mathematical 
genius at Camp Cody, away down in Texas, figured up in 
his idle moments that if the cases of sweaters that had come 
in were ranged in a row they would make a fine barricade 
nearly half a mile long. 

Then there were the pitiful things in the base hospital — 
the things that laid bare the quick of life and drew forever 
on the reserve fund of nerve and heart. There was the 
drawing of wills, the adjustment of allotments, and the 
constant touch that must be kept with all the teeming and 
changing life of that city which was called a camp. It 
certainly was a variegated industry, this Camp Service! 
A man of unsteady nerves or inflammable temper or lacking 
in resourcefulness would not have kept his sanity in it longer 
than twenty-four hours. It did not require continual 
searching to find the ^' gaps'' ; other people found them for 
you ; the Red Cross mission was to fill them. To get soap, 
brooms, medicine-glasses, and hot water bottles for a hospital 
whose supplies were held up on a railroad siding somewhere ; 
to provide a heater for heating liquids; to get screens to 
give the ward patients a certain amount of necessary 
privacy; to rig up a building where junior officers could 
study nights; to provide entertainment for a delegation 
of Civil War veterans ; to get a Ford car for the Division 
Surgeon to go his rounds in when an epidemic was over- 
hanging the camp; to hurry in a consignment of horse 
medicine out of the blue sky in time to save the whole herd 
of sick and dying remounts from being sent to the horse 
cemetery; to find laundry tubs on twenty-four hours' 
notice for a quarantined regiment ; to skirmish up quarters 
for a staff of nurses ; and, finally, to get a flag to put on the 
coffin of a dead soldier on his last join-ney home, represent 
a few of the requirements and not even a decimal part of the 
work accomplished. 



CHAPTER V 

THE NAVY 

Red Cross Cooperation with the Navy — The Naval Reserve Force — 
Medical and Surgical Service — Hospital Ships Equipped through 
the Red Cross — Lack of Coast Hospitals — Personnel for Base 
Hospitals Supplied by Red Cross — Naval Shore Hospitals Abroad — ■ 
Organization of Naval Auxiliaries — Letter of Secretary Daniels — ' 
Rush Order for Surgical Dressings — Camp Service in Naval Sta- 
tions — Convalescent Houses at Naval Stations — Relief for Sur- 
vivors of the San Diego — Admiral Sims Encomiums. 

THE mass of the American people are wholly unaware, 
I am sure, of the close cooperation that existed all 
through the war between our organization and the Navy. 
Nor is it at all surprising when one considers the strictness 
of the departmental censorship. These strange fighting 
ships, the lean, trim cruisers, the lithe sea wasps that they 
call destroyers, the undersea boats, all are members of our 
family but we are permitted to have little more than a 
speaking acquaintance with them. They come; they go. 
They swing in the river at evening and with the last 
somnolent note of their bugles yet echoing across the 
waters, they are still with the stillness of sleeping villages. 
When the sun comes they are gone, and the young ebb tide, 
which tells no secrets, silently follows on their track. 
Every now and then, it is true, some fortunate in- 
dividuals catch a glimpse of these great, gray ghosts of war 
moving in purposeful majesty down the harbor outward 
bound, and fading into the murk and mystery of the sea. 
But the horizon's rim is the end of their knowledge. 

52 



THE NAVY 53 

Now and again, however, there comes the inevitable leak 
— the human equation is always to be reckoned with — and 
word finds its way into the public prints of some brisk bit 
of business that the Navy has been doing. But that is all. 
The highest tribute that a loyal people can possibly pay to 
the Navy is that of unquestioning and abiding faith which, 
certainly, is the evidence of things not seen. 

Public interest and popular enthusiasm turned ever, 
perforce, to the soldier whom we had always with us. 
Sturdy, clean, competent, and happy, he was forever tramping 
up and down the thoroughfares, a welcome visitor at the 
Red Cross Canteens. Yet, during these anxious years, our 
ships together with those of our Allies held watch over 
the German Navy, netted the harbors, mined the runways, 
keeping up night and day a sleepless vigil while it safely 
convoyed 2,000,000 soldiers and many more millions of 
supplies across the Atlantic. 

Almost at the start the Red Cross had one of its oppor- 
tunities to cooperate with, or better, to help the Navy. It 
was at a time when newly fledged naval recruits were being 
hurried into the great formation and four hundred of them 
were rushed east from the Great Lakes station to Washing- 
ton. They were forced to depart so hurriedly that their 
account books were left behind. They arrived in the 
capital with practically no money and there was no prospect 
that the governmental machine could provide them with 
funds. A request was made to the Red Cross to finance 
them over the period of delay, which was cheerfully granted. 

But to go back a little : In August, 1916, Congress had 
created the Naval Reserve, unlimited as to number for the 
duration of war; the old naval militia became Class Two 
of the Reserves. By this measure the Navy, later on, was 
able to reach out and gather in men who had seen service, as 
well as thousands of recruits. The regular establishment 
increased in numbers from 55,000 to 88,000 in a few months 



54 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

and, ultimately, reached nearly 600,000 men. The Marines 
jumped from 10,000 to 75,000. 

We come now to what might be called the first move in 
the naval game which followed our entrance into the conflict : 
the spectacular arrival of the first flotilla of our destroyers 
in British waters long before they were expected. For many 
uneventful years the Navy had been waiting for a chance 
to make just such a dash as that and the order, needless to 
say, was carried out in accordance with the best traditions 
of the service. Within six weeks, also, after war was de- 
clared, the personnel of the Navy had more than doubled. 
Not only was the Atlantic Fleet growing in an amazing rate, 
but the Navy was called upon to furnish guards for American 
merchantmen, and it had already been suggested that the 
training of the new merchant crews, soon to be launched, 
should be under naval auspices. 

Meanwhile, the Medical and Surgical Service of the Navy 
had been organized with great care and thoroughness. In 
the naval training schools there was established at the open- 
ing of the war, as part of the general preparation for a great 
emergency, an elaborate system of instruction and training 
for pharmacists and hospital corps men. The training of 
these new forces was intensive and involved practice as 
well as theory. There was instruction in clerical work, 
microscopy, urinalysis, pharmacy, dentistry, pathology, 
bacteriology, chemical nursing. X-ray examination and 
development of plates, the making of splints and surgical 
dressings, and all the chemical laboratory and field work 
incident to the care of the sick and wounded. The Army, 
numerically so great, stripped the field of medical men and 
hospital attendants. The Navy, especially for sea service, 
— where women cannot or do not go, — was forced to 
rely upon itself. To realize the urgency of this need, it is 
necessary to consider the special character of naval service, 
its environment, and its difficulties. 



THE NAVY 55 

The Army can evacuate its wounded from one hospital to 
another by prompt and, in the case of hospital trains, highly 
equipped conveyances. Aboard a warship it is different. In 
an engagement between modern vessels the space available 
for the wounded is limited, and the intensity of battle 
permits of little or no work with them until an engagement 
is over. 

The most that can be done for a wounded man is to apply 
the dressing that every one carries and to remove him, if he 
cannot remove himself, to the unexposed side of the ship to 
await attention until the battle is over. Then, if the ship 
stays above water and there are surgeons enough left, the 
wounded may be transferred to an ambulance ship, hospital 
ship, or other transport, if there be one nearer than the 
nearest land. 

This matter of hospital ships was one of vital moment to 
naval establishments and one in which the United States 
Navy had long labored under serious embarrassment. The 
lack of facilities in this service had been obvious for a long 
time prior to our entrance into the war, and by persistent 
effort Congress had been prevailed upon to make appro- 
priations for its extension. Two passenger vessels — sister 
ships of about 10,000 tons — were taken over by the 
Government and adapted to hospital uses. They were com- 
missioned under the names of Comfort and Mercy. Through 
the Red Cross, the Society of Colonial Dames provided 
money to equip them, which was done in the most thorough 
manner. 

In addition to these there was the Solace, a small ship, 
also converted and which, prior to the war, was the only 
vessel maintained for this purpose by the Navy. Mention, 
however, should be made of the yacht Surf whose owner 
offered through the Red Cross to turn her over as an am- 
bulance ship to attend the fleet in Atlantic waters. She was 
altered to meet the requirements of the service, equipped 



56 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

with all the necessary appliances and placed in commission 
on May 27, 1917, in New England waters, thus releasing the 
Solace for purely hospital service. Later she was trans- 
ferred to Chesapeake Bay, and in August to the New York 
base. When the Red Cross flags and markings were re- 
moved, and she was turned back by the Government, she 
had transported in the neighborhood of a thousand sick 
men from ships of war. But save for the Surf there was no 
distinctive ambulance ship available for the naval service. 
In this connection the following will be of interest : — 

" A hospital ship," says a writer on naval matters, '^ does not in any 
sense replace a base hospital in a coast town. The hospital ship acts as 
a hospital transport to which ineffectives are transferred to fixed base 
hospitals. The hospital ship is, in a way, a fleet base hospital moving 
from place to place as the fleet position changes on the sea." 

At the beginning of the war there was a decided lack of 
coast hospitals, notwithstanding that the Medical Bureau 
of the Navy had long tried to secure them. However, 
there was great activity in expansion of hospital facilities 
based upon the nucleus of the old established naval hos- 
pitals, which had undergone material improvement and 
enlargement. Civilian hospitals in larger cities were speci- 
fied as collateral naval institutions, and prominent civilian 
physicians were enrolled in the Navy Aid. 

Apropos of this last statement, I have the assurance of 
an authority that within a year after the United States 
entered the war nearly five hundred medical officers were 
added to the present Medical Corps of the Navy, and a 
thousand medical officers of the Naval Reserve Corps were 
assigned to active duty. Every sort of specialist was listed 
in the Navy service. 

Nor was the Red Cross at all backward in the way of 
assistance : it supplied the personnel for five base hospitals. 
In itself this may not seem, perhaps, to be of much im- 
portance, but in the intense work which characterized the 



J 



THE NAVY 57 

naval medical service, it was distinctly an advantage to 
secure staffs of medical men and nurses who had worked 
together in civil practice and were familiar with each other's 
methods. Thus, our Red Cross system of recruiting as 
many as possible of its hospital units from large cities was 
the means of providing the peculiar teamwork that is so 
essential. 

On August 22, 1917, the Red Cross had provided eight 
base hospitals and thirty station units of the Navy with 
medical officers and nurses. Hospital corps men and expert 
workmen in various lines coincident to hospital operation 
were provided by the Navy from its trained personnel. 
For example, in addition to doctors and nurses, each unit 
included diagnosticians. X-ray specialists, pay-clerk, com- 
missary steward, yeomen, carpenters, electricians, plumbers, 
mechanics, cooks, and mess attendants. In perfecting the 
base hospital system, the Public Health Service collaborated 
with us in attending to sanitation. 

Moreover, at that time the Red Cross stood ready to equip 
more base hospital units for the Navy, but no further call 
was made. In addition to permanent equipment it pro- 
vided articles of invalid diet, which were a boon to the 
sailor in convalescence. 

After activity started in foreign waters. Red Cross 
efforts bore fruit in increased efficiency of naval shore 
hospitals abroad. There were two base hospitals in Brest, 
each of which accommodated 500 patients ; one in Queens- 
town, which held 300; one at Lieth, with an expanding 
capacity of 800; one at Strathpepper, rated at 500; and 
a small hospital of 50 beds near London, which was purely 
a Red Cross establishment. 

In the effort to organize its system of service at the 
beginning of hostilities, in order to supply every possible 
lack of sailor and soldier and to render instant aid in 
any direction to all branches of the service, the Red Cross 



58 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

began in September, 1917, the formation of Naval Auxiliaries 
throughout the country. This was done in compliance with 
the wishes of the Secretary of the Navy, who addressed a 
letter to the Chairman of the War Council in which he 
successfully endeavored to impress upon me the necessity 
of centralizing all of America's war relief agencies under the 
Red Cross. It read : — 

Dear Mr. Davison : 

For some months a large number of patriotic women of the country, 
animated by a desire to add to the comfort of the fine body of youths who 
have enlisted in the Navy, have been sending useful gifts of their own 
make. Some of these good women have done this work through the Red 
Cross and others through different organizations. It has been suggested 
that it would be wise if the Red Cross, the only National relief organiza- 
tion having official recognition, be asked to extend its large sphere of 
usefulness by taking over entirely the direction of this laudable work of 
sending tokens of good will from willing workers to the men in the Navy 
by creating a Naval Auxiliary of the Red Cross. 

I am sure the country fully approves the statement of the President, 
that "recent experience has made it more clear than ever that a multi- 
plicity of relief agencies tends to bring about confusion, duplication, delay, 
and waste." In every European country volunteer aid has been rendered 
"under a well-organized central body." The Red Cross is the body to 
which the whole country looks. To its appeals the people are ready to 
respond generously because, as President Wilson recently said : "With 
its catholicity and its democracy the Red Cross is broad enough to em- 
brace aU efforts for the relief of our soldiers and sailors, the care of their 
families, and for the assistance of any other non-combatants who may 
require aid." With this broad foundation, with a record of efficiency, I 
feel sure that the workers of the country who are particularly interested 
in the men who wear the Naval uniform will be glad if the Red Cross will 
increase its benefactions by this natural and proper addition to its noble 
service. 

If your organization can do this, the Navy Department and the Navy 
in all its units and the one hundred million Americans who are proud of 
their Navy will give cordial aid and hearty cooperation. 

Trusting that this suggestion will meet your favorable consideration, 

I am. 

Sincerely yours, 

JosEPHus Daniels. 



THE NAVY 59 

And again at a meeting on November 26, 1917, the Secre- 
tary said : — 

"The women are in the War because war cannot be conducted without 
them. Across the water in the early days of the War there were mobilized 
organizations of patriotic women and patriotic men. They organized 
in the cities and states to serve and help, but they largely failed of their 
purpose because of their division of interest. They lacked a uniform and 
coordinating head. 

"I think it time everybody in America should be a member of an 
organization and helping the Army and Navy. 

"In getting the coordination we must not lose the spontaneity and the 
enthusiasm and the zeal of individuals, but it must be harnessed to or- 
ganization. 

"Since the Geneva Convention the Red Cross has been the chief or- 
ganization to which people looked for succor, for help, and for wise ad- 
ministration. It has demanded the best thought of the country. They 
are trying to coordinate all the agencies of America, and we are here this 
morning to work with them. I shall assure you for myself and for the 
Navy, we will cooperate with you in every way possible. 

"Some time ago, a very patriotic organization announced that unless 
a certain number of sweaters were sent within a certain time, the Marines 
would freeze. Now the spirit back of that was to stimulate good feeling 
and help, but it did more harm than good, because the men in charge of 
that service had not neglected their duty. The impression got out some- 
how or another that the Secretary of the Navy, the Secretary of War, and 
the head of the Marine Service did not appreciate the splendid service 
women rendered. Of course it was a mistake. 

"You know that this Navy is made up of boys. The average age is 
twenty-one, perhaps nineteen. Sixteen year old boys rushed into the 
Navy and they said they were eighteen in order to get in, and I have no 
doubt that if they made a false statement the Recording Angel blotted it 
out. 

"So you are working for boys, and that is the appeal to mothers of 
this country, you are working for boys, and I come over to thank you 
and to join with you and with the heads of the Red Cross, who are charged 
with a great work." 

As the ships, large and small, came hurrying to the Atlantic 
bases and the work of final preparation went forward, many 
things were found lacking, among which was a supply of 



60 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

surgical dressings. This was essentially a Red Cross emer- 
gency. Dressings were called for to supply 133 destroyers 
and small vessels and 56 battleships and cruisers. The 
Navy supplied the gauze, but the Red Cross had the wilhng 
workers at hand for immediate action. So far as possible, 
the Red Cross placed the order for these dressings in the 
home. towns of the ships, but as haste was most essential 
the demand, for the most part, was distributed among the 
ten nearest large Chapters — Chicago, Cleveland, Pitts- 
burgh, Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, 
Boston, and the Atlantic and New England Divisions. 
The Chapters turned the order out, packed and marked, in 
record time. It was all forwarded to the Supply Depart- 
ment at the Brooklyn Navy Yard for distribution to the 
ships wherever they might be. 

The making of this supply of dressings, on Navy specifi- 
cations, lifted a load from the Navy shoulders and enabled 
their surgical staff to attend to other pressing business; 
and, in addition to the dressings, a large number of knitted 
articles were supplied to these same destroyers and battle- 
ships by the Red Cross knitting women, who had now begun 
to work for the Navy. Sweaters and socks and helmets 
went out in great bundles to ships and training stations. 

In the first outburst of excitement, however, there were a 
number of people who thought little of knitting needles as 
instruments of war, but who now sat in the revealing bright- 
ness of a great light as the letters began to come from the 
North Sea in Arctic weather telling of the comfort of Red 
Cross sweaters and snug woolen helmets. Indeed, many a 
tar blessed the Red Cross knitter long before his ship poked 
her nose into the Atlantic for the journey overseas. 

One bitter night in the early winter, a battleship came 
bowling into Norfolk from Guantanamo Station with several 
hundred very blue noses aboard. Out of the dark they 
picked up a tug fight. The harbor boat swung alongside 




m 
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O 

O 

Q 

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o 

Q 

o 



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THE NAVY 61 

and Red Cross men from the Norfolk Station swarmed 
aboard with bundles of Chapter knit goods. That strnrdy 
ship crossed the Atlantic many times afterwards, taking 
the Army across. To its Commander the Red Cross 
sweater was the best thing of the war. P 

Parallel in every respect of organization and work with 
that carried on in the Army camps and cantonments, the 
Red Cross maintained a thoroughly organized camp service 
in camps and training stations and hospitals in fourteen 
naval districts. 

At Pelham Bay, Newport, Portsmouth, Quantico, 
(Marines) Chelsea, Great Lakes, and Norfolk it estabhshed 
convalescent houses similar to those at Army camps ; and 
other similar work at Philadelphia, Paris Island, (Marines) 
and Balboa Park, near San Diego, CaUfornia, was just 
begun, or partially completed, when hostilities ceased. 

In divers ways, some large and important, others small 
but still important, the Red Cross was able to assist the 
Navy. The consensus of opinion in the Navy, however, 
is that the best thing the organization did for the sailor was 
to provide these recreation places where the convalescent 
men, away from the unhappy monotony of hospital sur- 
roundings and the propinquity of suffering, could for a 
time forget their own woes and make strides toward health 
and a return to their homes or to duty. 

To facilitate the work of the Navy on shore, it has been 
the privilege of the Red Cross to assist by provision of motor 
equipment and service. A very considerable number of 
ambulances, motor trucks, and touring cars were provided 
for the use of the naval establishment. Where civilian 
hospitals are utilized for the accommodation of Navy 
patients they are often widely scattered and the naval 
doctor, in order to visit them, is compelled to travel long 
distances. Congress does not provide quick transportation 
for these emergencies, but this was provided by the Red Cross. 



62 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

A very good example of Red Cross service for the naval 
stations is found in the New York or Third Naval Dis- 
trict : the service here was under the Atlantic Division, 
with headquarters at New York City. There were eighteen 
stations in this district in which Red Cross work for the 
sailor was conducted. In and out of New York thousands 
upon thousands of sailors passed; and we contributed in 
every way possible to the comfort and content of the mul- 
titude. 

The same thing is true in other great naval centers, such 
as Newport News, Boston, Newport, Philadelphia, Norfolk, 
Charleston, New Orleans, Galveston, at the Great Lakes 
Naval Training Station, at Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, 
and San Diego, as well as in the navy yards where men 
were at work on the ships which were in process of construc- 
tion or tied up for repairs. 

Among the incidents connected with Red Cross coopera- 
tion with the Navy, the strangest, perhaps, was the action 
of a woman who, by the way, for a year and a half after- 
wards was the busiest person about the Hoboken Embarka- 
tion Station (the old North German Lloyd and Hamburg- 
American piers) . I am positive it will be written in personal 
if not official Navy records as a remarkable instance of 
intuition. One day there came a woman all the way from 
western New Jersey to the Red Cross Station who said that 
she had an unexplainable feeling that something was wrong. 
That there was something wrong was demonstrated in less 
than a half hour from the time of her arrival by a message 
from the Navy Yard which said that the survivors of the 
cruiser San Diego were coming in. There was fast work 
in Hoboken getting out warm clothing from the Red Cross 
stores and commandeering of trucks and tugs for its 
delivery. The boat to which the woman was assigned 
took off seventy-eight men from the incoming collier. When 
she went back for the next load she took the things the 



THE NAVY 63 

men needed for their immediate comfort. And so it hap- 
pened that half the next day men were rimning around 
the docks in Red Cross pajamas, looking for all the world 
like escaped hospital patients, while they waited for the 
Government to find them uniforms. That woman surely 
left the Red Cross engraved on the memories of many 
sea-faring men ! 

The same thing happened on the other side of the Atlantic. 
Out of the busy life which the Navy led over there, there 
came through various channels thrilling narratives of rescue. 
It was tolerably well known, in spite of naval modesty and 
secretiveness, that United States vessels, both small and 
large, gave a very good account of themselves in the dis- 
position of submarines. On one occasion an American 
torpedo boat, having rescued crew and passengers from a 
steamer which had been sunk in the English Channel, 
brought them into a French port in cold weather almost 
destitute of clothing. It would have been a very serious 
matter for the victims of this outrage to have waited the 
action of the United States Congress for an appropriation 
for clothing and its delivery to France on contract. Appli- 
cation was made to the Red Cross, which furnished outfits 
for the entire company. 

In summing up the joint work of the Red Cross and the 
Navy it is not too much to say that our organization 
wholeheartedly indorses the sense of satisfaction that all 
our people have for the accomplishments of the Navy. 
Conversely, the Navy has ever shown itself most appre- 
ciative of the efforts of the Red Cross to do their part, 
and nowhere is this spirit of enthusiastic fairness more 
happily reflected than in the words of the Commander of 
the American Naval Forces in British waters : — 

"When our men are sick or wounded we need quick action," declared 
Admiral Sims in an address in London, "and it must be free and un- 
hampered. That is where the Red Cross comes to the front. Disasters 



64 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

like the Otranto show how valuable is its work." And, later, in replying 
to a question that can easily be imagined, he said: "all government 
activity is governed by rules with a view to what is likely to happen, but 
aU needs cannot be foreseen. When an emergency turns up, we some- 
times have not the facilities, sometimes not the legal authority to do all 
that we ought to do. The Red Cross man can make a law as quick as 
you can write a check. The Red Cross is ever present to help in time of 
trouble." 



CHAPTER VI 

HOME SERVICE 

An Inspiration — Number of Families Assisted — Home Service Worker, 
a Silent Agent — The Pictm'e of the Woman Left Behind — The 
Range of Home Service — The Peculiar Fitness of the Red Cross 
for Home Service — Representatives in All Camps and Canton- 
ments — The Machinery for the Work — United States Government 
Sanctions Home Service in Camps and Naval Stations — How Home 
Service Is Administered — The Character of the "Cases" — Com- 
plications after the Signing of the Armistice — Home Service In- 
stitutes and Training Courses — Number of Trained Workers — 
Lasting Force for the Betterment of Social Conditions. 

WHEN a man goes out to fight his country's battles he 
and all who belong to him are of paramount moment 
to the Government. The day has gone by wherein his de- 
pendents are abandoned to whatever fortune might befall 
them. Indeed, few things connected with the fighting 
man are more impressive than the increasing solicitude 
extended to those whose welfare is imperiled by his absence 
or death. 

Almost at the start of this new conception of duty, — an 
acknowledgment at last of the importance of every in- 
dividual, — the Red Cross recognized that here indeed 
was a long step forward. And since it has ever been its 
mission to consolidate public effort on behalf of the soldiers 
and sailors, to concentrate the prevalent good-will towards 
sufferers in other countries into an organized system of re- 
lief, it, therefore, proceeded to formulate a plan for the far 
more delicate and difficult work of giving to the families 

F 65 



66 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

of the American fighting men the hand and help that they 
needed when the need was most pressing. 

It is hardly necessary to say that this was an undertaking 
that required the exercise of tact in no small degree. When 
the call came for hundreds of thousands of our fighting men, 
many of them left behind them the tangled affairs of life, 
some of which it was well-nigh impossible to straighten out. 

To enter into these innumerable homes in the capacity 
of guide, counselor, and friend, to do so many diverse things 
for so many widely variant people was in the nicety of its 
requirement no less exacting than the planning of a military 
campaign, and amounted to far more than the simple duty 
of giving people a hand to help them over a rough spot. 

Home Service was an inspiration. Organized for the 
purpose just mentioned, there was a human note as well as an 
assurance of sincerity in it which were keys to confidence. 
It had no echo of condescension or patronage ; on the con- 
trary, it took people back to the time when the scattered 
and imperiled colonists were all things to one another; 
in other words, it brought into the foreground of thought the 
picture of friendliness, of neighborhness, and it won prompt 
and grateful recognition. 

As the work developed the scope of its possibilities 
became more and more patent. Home Service did not go 
about its business preceded by a brass band, so to speak ; to 
have done so would have ended its usefulness automatically. 
It had its very root in the sanctity of confidence, and the 
people whom it was privileged to serve knew that if it gave 
assistance it would also keep the faith. 

Who of you know of the things that Home Service has 
done in your community — perhaps even next door ? Not 
many, probably. And yet within a little more than a year 
it took into its keeping approximately 300,000 families. 
If one will consider the number of perplexing problems the 
affairs of one family can present, it is not difficult to under- 



HOME SERVICE 67 

stand what it signified in service rendered to straighten out 
the tangled affairs of a large number of famihes scattered 
all over the United States ; nor must we forget that it is 
that very confidence which has made of Home Service the 
big brother of many a troubled household, the lawyer for 
counsel in times of stress, the banker in a pinch of cir- 
cumstances, the doctor in sickness, the nurse, the teacher, the 
bearer of burdens, and the friend in need that is responsible 
for its being relatively unknown. The things it did were 
not on the surface. 

Every one knows that the canteens were a picturesque 
and hvely addition to any railway station. That there was 
glory in hurhng a Red Cross motor-ambulance through the 
lanes of traffic on a crowded city street, and that Red Cross 
service in France had a glamour and a thrill all its own are, 
also, well-known truths. But the Home Service worker 
was a silent agent who, in a way, did good by stealth; 
so that if by any chance one of his countless deeds did 
creep into print it was by the very nature of the case utterly 
depersonahzed. As for the glory of the service, it was ever 
unhonored and unsung. 

It follows, therefore, that the narrative of what Home 
Service did since it entered upon its mission consists in the 
main of a bhnd succession of ^^ cases." They are told in 
skeleton with a studious lack of detail. But it is certain 
that in these reports, flowing from every corner of the 
country, from homes and camps, from the embarkation piers, 
and from the turbulent zones of soldier fife behind the lines, 
that there was more of melodrama, more of the plain, 
plaintive comedy of human fife and of tragedy, even, than 
would suffice to fill the endless reels of half the world. 

No one who has traveled country roads, either by foot or 
by motor, could have missed the home side of the war. 
In all the thinly populated places, in the Httle white cottages 
of the New England hills, in the farmhouses of the Dakotas, 



68 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

far scattered over their rolling expanses of wheat fields, 
one saw the war symboUzed by strangely muted homes. 
There was a hush over things, a sense of finahty about it all. 
The smoke rose only from a necessary chimney, the barn 
was shut up tight, even the '^ stock'' stood around in a solemn 
sort of expectancy. Rural industry, simple as it was, had 
lost in such places its emphasis. The fading service flag 
and Mr. Hoover's mark in the parlor window told the passing 
stranger what had happened. For the old farm, batthng 
against pests and bad seasons, taxes, and the hungry and 
long-hved mortgage, was not Hke a mercantile or manufactur- 
ing business in which diversified labor is distributed through 
many channels ; and, besides, war and the munition factories 
had stripped the farm. More than likely, too, the next- 
door neighbor was a lone woman whose mainstay was some- 
where between the farmstead gates and Vladivostok. 
And, to make matters harder, even if a woman could manage 
a farm — and there are some who could — there was not a 
farmhand to be had for love or money. 

In nine cases out of ten the farm woman took over as 
much of the farm work as she could handle single handed. 
Such a situation, of course, was a trouble-breeder. All that 
anybody on earth could do in such cases was to be a good 
neighbor. It does not require much imagination, therefore, 
to surmise what the war did to country homes, how still the 
nights were, or how far the bare fields stretched to the 
horizon ! 

The monotony in the cities may not have been so intense, 
but in cities a family on the floor above might as well be in 
Manchuria for all they know of you or all the heed they 
give you. It is an old saying that there is no place so 
lonely as the city street. And the war brought pathetic 
changes here. Behind the same old service flag and the 
food pledge, which in so many cases was a superfluity in the 
face of soaring prices, the same old misery was doing its 



HOME SERVICE 69 

work. From the proud habitation uptown to the crowded 
tenements downtown, where Enghsh, Greek, Itahan, Yiddish, 
and even German made the fire escape a babel on hot sum- 
mer nights, men of the A. E. F. had gone forth, leaving 
behind them lonely women and still homes, r. 

As will be easily seen, therefore, all the variation of town 
and country life came within the range of Home Service. 
In planning the work it was to do it enlisted a wide and a 
detailed knowledge of life as it is lived everywhere. It was 
essential to have shrewd consciousness of how people's 
minds work as well as an almost inspired intuition of things 
that were apt to happen. It had all been measured in 
terms of morale to begin with, and the threads of this mul- 
titudinous life traced on a chart of inference and theory, 
which proved phenomenally accurate from first to last in the 
great drama of war. 

It has been said of certain important tasks in this war 
that there was no agency that could handle them except 
the Red Cross. This is, of course, an overstatement. It 
is, nevertheless, doubtful if any other existing instrument 
could have fulfilled the peculiar purpose of Home Service, 
for there was no other agency which had ready and equipped 
an organization so far-reaching, so instantly and so in- 
cessantly active and available, and so closely in touch with 
the homes and the needs they were apt to have. Moreover, 
in the thousands of Chapters driving away night and day 
for the soldiers and sailors, there was a perfect line of com- 
munication to every home which had sent a man to war. 

Ever since the war began the outstanding thing in all 
Red Cross work was the alacrity with which its wide-branch- 
ing plan of organization enabled it to meet demands on 
the minute. The actual accomplishment was noteworthy, 
but the sentimental unity of the machine enabled it to 
perform many more delicate functions — functions which 
in their nature required a high pressure of personal tact and 



70 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

sane judgment, not to speak of the necessity of a business- 
like faculty of execution. Foremost among these was Home 
Service. The framers of Red Cross plans knew the American 
man. They knew — what a great many narrow-gauge 
people had never suspected — that he was domestic to a 
degree never imagined, and that while he was perfectly 
willing to throw up his job and put his hfe to the hazard, 
if his country asked it, the only virtually important thing 
was that his family should be free from trouble. 

^^ My time in the service," wrote a Texan, early in the war, 
'4s the happiest time of my life. It is great! But you 
pack up your home affairs when you go in, and you can't 
help wondering all the time about the folks at home." 

Home Service proved the most effective possible agent for 
establishing in numberless homes a new view of life and a 
new schedule of values, which was seed for future growth 
and betterment ; it created new ideals where they would do 
the most good ; it was, without doubt, the most effectual 
kind of shock absorber for the Government, and by its 
good offices a silencer of the note of resentment and dis- 
content which echoed far in war time. 

There are women, as we all know, who are natural-born 
dependents and whose training has added to their native 
tendency; on the other hand, there are those who have 
inherent resources of courage and self-help and will fight their 
way through any obstacle. So, naturally, it was the former 
class who needed the ministrations, for the most part, of 
Home Service. A man who left a strictly dependent wife 
at home with a few little dependents looking to her as acting 
manager could do very well for about three days. Then he 
began to realize, as he never did before, how helpless she 
was. One wailing letter has made all the wondrous new life 
of the training camp a gray and dismal thing. The mental 
picture of an empty pocket-book, with a weasel-faced land- 
lord in the background insisting that '' leases are leases," 



HOME SERVICE 71 

summoned in its train visions of misery that made a man 
deaf to the brisk accents of a drill sergeant and replaced 
martial ardor with a longing to be back home for just half 
an hour. It is a corollary of modern war that you can't 
manufacture a first-class soldier out of a man who is thinking 
all the time that his personal responsibihties are going to the 
dogs, and whose barrack pillow is hardened by nightmares 
of trouble in the home. 

I have been told that there were practically only two 
kinds of desertion from the American Army : one of men who 
deserted in France from their regiments in the rear in order 
to join regiments at the front ; the other of men who deserted 
because of unhappy letters from home. When we went into 
war it was established beyond any shadow of doubt that 
there must be intimate and direct connection between the 
family and the trenches, that the home fires as well as the 
flames of patriotism were essential to proper military temper- 
ature. 

There had to be a way to send soldiers and sailors 3000 
miles or more across the sea and yet assure them that 
their families alike deserved and would enjoy the good faith 
and watchful kindness of the nation. The roots of the thing 
struck deep. The easiest way to keep the service man from 
being worried by unhappy letters was to make the letters 
happy. The only way to accompHsh this in so many homes 
was to establish a neighborhood feeling that would embrace 
all. And the chapter organization, — a growth whose roots 
ran into millions of homes in every section of the country, 
— was there for the spreading of the Home Service gospel 
and the doing of the Home Service work. 

Three months after the declaration of war. Home Service 
had already begun to send representatives to all the camps 
and cantonments in order that Home Service workers in 
the Chapters might always be sure of a good attorney, whose 
duty it was to locate the soldier in camp when his family 



72 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

wanted news of him, and vice versa. There were camps, 
notably in the vicinity of New York, with its strangely 
diversified population, where for three weeks the major part 
of the Red Cross field director's time was taken up with the 
home problems of men in the new levies. All the Red Cross 
machinery, all its resources were called into use in the 
prosecution of Home Service business : it enlisted trained 
men and women of every sort, some skilled in the care of 
the sick, others whose trade was to unravel legal and business 
tangles and who knew the resources of a community. These 
could minister to people caught in war's complications far 
better than an untrained individual, no matter how well 
meaning, could ever hope to do. To solve properly any 
problem, even the failure of an allotment check to arrive, 
required a system, with agents both in the Chapters at home 
and in Washington; it required some means of access to 
the War Department where the mystery of soldiers' money 
could be elucidated. True, the troubles of some lonely 
woman could be settled, but it required machinery, brains, 
telephone, telegraph, cable, letters, railway journeys, and 
professional assistance, all working together. Home Service 
could set a thousand forces at work, thousands of miles 
apart, to find the right answer to any question. 

At first it was hard to make this purpose clear. The Red 
Cross pursued no one. It did not intrude into people's 
business. This would have been the first step to failure. 
But wherever its lantern shone on the darkness of a camp 
street, wherever the chapter centered its war activities, the 
latchstring was always out for the man and his kinsfolk 
to enter. 

Now, like every one else, the American soldier, or sailor, 
has his traits, and it required thorough knowledge of his 
mental processes to introduce the business to him and tell 
him that he was entitled and welcome to all that the Red 
Cross could do for him. So in the training camps, in the 



HOME SERVICE 73 

railway terminals, and in every place where sailors and sol- 
diers congregated big signs were displayed at points where 
no eye could miss them. Some of these signs asked pointed 
questions — they were never impertinent, however direct, 
for a question is pertinent or impertinent according to what 
is behind it. Here are some examples : — 

'^Have your allowance and allotment failed to come 
through satisfactorily?" 

^^Are you worried about the home folks? If so tell your 
troubles to the Red Cross man." 

^'We keep your home safe while you fight to keep the 
world safe." 

All this was reassuring news to the fighting man who had 
just learned from a letter that everything was going wrong. 

It is eloquent of the sagacity with which the Army was 
constructed and managed that these placards, in curious 
contrast with the pmrely military atmosphere of the camp, 
where every conceivable thing has been bent to martial pur- 
pose, were placed at the request of the United States Govern- 
ment in the interest of military efficiencies, a governmental 
recognition of the fact that a worried fighter is a poor fighter. 
At most of the stations the men in trouble — and there were 
a multitude of them — had the same everlasting problem of 
the bread-winner. But where a civilian, if he had any 
gumption, could get out and administer '^Civilian Relief" 
to himself, the service man was tied hand and foot. He 
knew that if his checks did not come through there would be 
no groceries in the house, and he was plainly between the 
devil and the deep sea. 

It was just because Home Service was equipped to step 
in and save this situation that it found its greatest field of 
endeavor in the camps. But all the promotion work was 
not done by the signboards ; there were other ways by 
which the Home Service representative found out who 
needed his assistance. He got it from the chaplains, from 



74 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

patriotic and relief organizations, from camp paymasters, 
and in other ways known only to these earnest practitioners. 
What Home Service did when the much needed moneys 
lagged was to file the claims again for preferred consideration 
at the Bureau of War Risk Insurance or the War and Navy 
Department, as the case might be. It got into immediate 
touch with the Red Cross Chapter in the man's home town, 
which sent some one around to see the family, advance 
the necessary money, adjust their legal tangles, get the 
doctor, get the nurse, and reconstruct the housekeeping 
schedules so as to lessen the anxiety incidental to the high 
cost of living. When the mother was able and of a mind 
to work and help out the family income, the Home Service 
— through its wide connection — got her a job. If she 
was about to do foolish things to banish loneliness, well, 
there were cures for loneliness, too. These are things that 
do not go by formula and never can be standardized. 

It may be said, therefore, that Home Service was pretty 
nearly all things to all men and women. But it is an 
interesting human fact that much of the work that it did 
for service men's families has been in response to demand 
from the service man himself. Many of the applications 
were made by men in camp who, in desperation, had been 
driven into seeking a way out of the dreary letters and who 
leaned on the Red Cross as it was meant to be leaned on. 
As for the women, some of them — perhaps because of 
their pride — did not go to the Red Cross to tell their 
trouble but wrote instead to their husband or son about it ; 
and he, not knowing how simple a matter this was for the 
machine to handle, immediately hated the sight of a rifle 
and began to think in the back of his head that the Kaiser 
might just as well have the earth since it was no longer fit 
to live in, — which was a perilous state of mind for a man 
who was headed for France 'with the country's fate in his 
hands. 



HOME SERVICE 75 

Confronted with a situation like this, Home Service 
stepped in and checked it ; and when it had once taken a 
family under its protective and advisory wing, it ^'carried 
on^' with them, kept tab on them, and mothered them prop- 
erly. After that the letters that went to camp or overseas 
had a new color and Uncle Sam had a new soldier. 

If Home Service in Italy was reflected in the victory at 
the Piave, Home Service in America gave an account of 
itself at Chateau-Thierry and along the stubbornly contested 
reaches of the Meuse. 

The ^'cases'' which constitute the Home Service record 
were multi-colored. In the main they pivoted on money, and 
the tough old question of subsistence, but their details varied 
as people do. There was every conceivable sort of plot. 
It was to the credit of the system that most of these had a 
happy ending. Where it was merely money or business 
complication that caused the trouble, it was easy of adjust- 
ment. 

Still further complications arose after the signing of the 
armistice, because then began the real test of the fighting 
man's morale. The fighting was over and the fighters 
wanted to return home. Their families were insistent that 
their boys should be returned to them. Home Service 
workers now had the additional task of explaining why 
their boys could not be returned immediately and of dissuad- 
ing them from sending their boys morale-destroying letters, 
of investigating family conditions of men who applied for 
discharge and, at the same time, not allow their sympathies 
to warp their judgment. Instead of decreasing, the work of 
Home Service kept increasing for many months after Novem- 
ber, 1918. Who can estimate, therefore, the effect of Home 
Service, before and after the signing of the armistice, on 
the mental attitude of the millions of people who either 
fought or gave fighters in the Great War ? 

There was hardly a department in the work of the Red 



76 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

Cross in which Home Service aid was not invoked or in 
which the home principle was not involved. The prompt 
acceptance of this service and this principle by the people 
whom it was meant to aid, and the realization of its meaning 
in the new life of America, demanded an extension of its 
scope, which meant a greatly increased number of workers. 
In order that there might be at hand a force to meet the 
growing need, the Red Cross established Home Service 
institutes, — a six weeks' training course planned to fit 
students not only for war work among soldiers' and sailors' 
families, but to serve in equally specific ways returned 
fighters themselves, who have been crippled in action and 
for whom definite programs of reeducation and industrial 
adjustment will be necessary. 

The syllabus of instruction prepared for these institutes, 
which were started in the fall of 1917, was wide and compre- 
hensive. It included not only the fundamental principles 
and procedure of Home Service, — health, employment of 
women and children in reeducation, — but went into all 
these departments with thoroughness in order that certifi- 
cates of the institute should imply a knowledge of the ethics 
of family and community living. Manuals of instruction 
were carefully prepared, covering the whole ground of Home 
Service activity. In this way the emergency was soon met. 

In the end it took 30,000 mature and tactful people to 
carry it on and at a cost approximately of three million 
dollars. But it did more than help win the war ; it raised 
the standards of health, efficiency, and happiness in the 
homes that had sent men to France, so that the man 
returning should find small reason to reproach his country 
for the way his family had been treated in his absence. 

At the time that this is written we are about to enter upon 
wider fields of international activity and these, obviously, 
necessitate new development in industry and thrift. But 
it has been part of the work of Home Service to teach these 



HOME SERVICE 77 

lessons with everyday application. It has shown in a 
practical fashion the effect of intensified effort, intelligent 
management, the worthlessness of outworn formulas. And 
precisely as the Red Cross labor in France was directed to 
the conservation of child life as insurance for the imperiled 
future of the republic, so in America we have made an effort 
to improve living conditions for soldiers' and sailors' families, 
always aiming at a steadily progressive and wider better- 
ment for the time that is ahead. 

The work that Home Service has done is merely a sowing 
of good seed ; future generations will reap the harvest. In 
spite of what was ostensibly an emergency origin, the whole 
undertaking was constructive in its inward purpose 
for the long future of our national life. Throughout 
the war Home Service taught English to women of foreign 
birth who had husbands in the war. Every instance 
of this kind meant one more family on the road to Ameri- 
canization. Again, a multitude of soldiers' and sailors' 
wives found it hard to resist the temptation to set their 
children at wage earning in order to increase the family in- 
come. But Home Service, mindful of the future and 
recognizing in this recourse a net loss in which the whole 
country shares, set itself persistently against it. Not only 
did it labor by every possible means to keep the children 
in the schools, but in many cases it contributed money 
outright to tide the family over. In others, expert assist- 
ance in the adjustment of household expenditure averted 
the necessity of turning soldiers' children into the factory. 

Lastly, it was in such things as solving imperative prob- 
lems and performing, at the same time, an educational 
office which looks to future widening of horizons, improve- 
ment of living conditions, maintenance of higher ambitions 
in the young, that Home Service assumed its highest position 
and that through it the Red Cross attained to a greater 
plane of usefulness. 



CHAPTER VII 

SOLDIERS OF THE CROSS 

The Nurse, a Crusader — The Red Cross Stands Sponsor for Her — 
Enrollment of Nurses — Called for Disaster — Relief Ship Red 
Cross — In Many Lands and Climes — Typhus in Serbia — Mo- 
bilized for Immediate Action in April, 1917 — Base Hospital Units — 
Reserve for the Army and Navy Nurse Corps — Unit System Later 
Abandoned — Changes in Character of Base Hospitals — Emergency 
Detachments for Cantonments and Camps — Conditions in Camps 
and Stations — Cooperation with Public Health Service in Sanitary 
Zones — Duties of Nurses in France — American Nurses for Ameri- 
can Men — Nursing Service of Red Cross in France — Call of the 
Italian Government — Honor Roll of the Red Cross — Expenditure 
for Equipment and Uniforms — Provisions for Comfort of Nurses — 
Work for Health of the World a Post-War Duty. 

THE Soldier of the Cross is a very human crusader. 
Where civilizations have crashed in disaster she makes 
living clean and possible ; with the modern magic of medi- 
cine, food, and cleanliness she banishes hunger and dirt; 
with infinite patience she builds up the lives of broken men 
and, seemingly, at times, is the only stronghold of sanity 
in their reeling world. 

To render such service worthily demands more than pity 
and a white cap ! It requires years of hard mental and 
physical training and the self-control that makes good 
discipline possible ; for she must stand ready to tax herself 
to the utmost at need and, at the same time, not indulge 
herself in the hysteria of overwork. Moreover, it requires 
the physical strength to endure long journeys and hardship ; 
more than all it requires high endurance of the soul — 

78 



SOLDIERS OF THE CROSS 79 

courage to bear vicarious suffering. The Red Cross nurse 
looks on mortal agony day and night, yet she holds fast 
to sanity and cheerfulness that she may rekindle spirits 
snuffed out by too much horror. She denies herself the 
luxury of emotion because lives depend on the steadiness 
of her hand. The stuff of her days is woven of the two great 
reahties — life and death ; yet those she tends must not 
suspect that she is a woman of many sorrows and acquainted 
with grief. 

Such is the nurse. For her the Red Cross stands sponsor. 
She has carried its symbol into the plague spots of every 
continent where disaster has left its mark — whether in 
San Francisco or in the far islands of the sea ; she has carried 
it to within a few short miles of the European trenches. 
Everywhere, the Red Cross has backed her up with money, 
with equipment, with supplies, with uniforms and recreation 
rooms and words of cheer. It has increased her value by 
giving her her tools and sending her where she is most 
needed. Around the work it has opened up the path of 
mercy for her to tread. That is the great mission of the 
Red Cross — to take the funded money, strength, and skill of 
the world and send it to fight against disease and ignorance 
wherever they may be found. That is the democracy of 
humanity. 

Five years before the European war brought a supreme 
duty and a supreme opportunity to nurses, the Red Cross 
began preparation to meet the unheralded need. In the 
fall of 1909 it affiliated itself with the American Nurses' 
Association and began to enroll nurses as a reserve for the 
Army and Navy. These young women were required to have 
had at least two years' training in a hospital that averaged 
fifty patients a day of both sexes, to be registered in their 
states, and to submit satisfactory evidences of fitness, and 
to be between the ages of 25 and 40. Enrollments increased 
year by year. Although no war clouds gathered, the Red 



80 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

Cross called again and again on its nurses to save the victims 
of fire and flood, conspicuous among which are Dayton, 
Salem, Luzon, the Titanic, and the Eastland. Each name 
recalls havoc wrought by fire or flood, by earthquake or ship- 
wreck, and it recalls, too, the heroic work of Red Cross nurses. 



In August, 1914, when the World War broke over Europe, 
the American Red Cross, true to its watchword, offered its 
trained personnel and hospital supplies to every belligerent 
country; acceptance was unanimous. On September 13, 
1914, the reUef ship Red Cross carried surgeons, supplies, 
and 120 nurses for England, Russia, France, Germany, 
Austria, Belgium, Serbia, and Bulgaria. Four days before, 
the Serbian unit had gone on a slow steamer, crowded with 
several thousand Serbian reservists, to meet what proved 
to be the most heroic task of all. 

It was, indeed, in many strange and unique shelters that 
the tiny American units set up the outposts of their country's 
generosity: for instance, there was an estate at Paignton, 
the Palais d'Hiver at Pau, a Lyceum at Kief, hastily erected 
pavilions on the sands of La Panne, a modern schoolhouse 
in Vienna, the Victoria Kabaret theater at Gleichwitz, a 
tobacco factory at Ghevgheh, a tent on the desert sands of 
Wadi-el-Arish ; other detachments were at Yvetot, France ; 
Nish, Serbia; Kosel, Germany; Budapest and Belgrade; 
and Constantinople and Hafi, Turkey. Part of the German 
unit went in September, 1915, to work among the German 
and Austrian prisoners in Russia. 

When, however, in the spring of 1915, typhus broke out 
in Serbia and men, women, and children died like flies, two 
Red Cross surgeons fell victims to the fever, and the ranks 
of the fit grew daily thinner. The Rockefeller Foundation 
and the Red Cross cooperated to rush volunteers and huge 
quantities of supplies into the infected country. Serbia 



SOLDIERS OF THE CROSS 81 

was, literally, drenched in disinfectants and smoked in 
sulphur, and only after a bitter battle was the scourge 
conquered. 

The tale of suffering that the pioneers sent back to America 
in 1914-1915 is famihar now to our ears, but in those early 
days its horror was unbeUevably strange. In this, their 
first contact with modem warfare, American nurses won a 
place of honor on the medical rolls of all Europe. Their 
experience was to prove valuable in later days. The units 
were recalled in October, 1915, after the promised year of 
service, but many members remained as volunteers. When 
America went into the war. Red Cross nurses were still 
serving in all of the Allied countries. 

Thus, the stirring and troubled days of April, 1917, found 
the Red Cross nurses mobilized for immediate action. 
Eight thousand and fifteen names stood on the Red Cross 
rolls. Of these the Red Cross could mobilize 2970 im- 
mediately, enough to care for an army of a million, accord- 
ing to the calculations of that early day. (The first military 
assignment was with the United States Marines at Vera 
Cruz in 1914. During the year ending in July, 1917, there 
had been assigned to the Army Nurse Corps 817 Red 
Cross nurses. Of these, several hundred were sent to 
take care of the 113,135 troops guarding the Mexican 
border.) 

For a year before the storm broke along our shores pre- 
paredness had been trumpeted down every wind. Active 
official preparation in a neutral country, however, is apt 
to verge on mobilization and let slip the dogs of war too 
soon. The Surgeon General, therefore, requested the Red 
Cross to organize Base Hospital Units, and allowed it the 
privilege of building up a hospital system that was to be the 
backbone of the Medical Corps during the first trying 
months of war. 

In the Base Hospital Units the doctors and nurses of 

G 



82 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

each group were accustomed to work together. When they 
moved they carried with them the personnel (from phar- 
macist to sculHon) and the equipment (from scalpel to 
laundry plant) to set up a complete five hundred bed hospital 
wherever needed. The value of this close formation had 
been tragically proved by the countries already in the war 
and by the experience of the Red Cross relief units abroad. 
The great civil hospitals of America were called on to 
organize teams from their staffs, and soon a score of units 
were established. Twenty-two doctors, two dentists, sixty- 
five Red Cross nurses, one hundred and fifty-three corps- 
men, six civilian employees, a chaplain — the complete per- 
sonnel signed the muster roll of each and pledged to report 
for duty whenever called within two years. The personnel 
of each fist called for careful study : the staff of the parent 
hospital must not be unduly weakened, yet every man and 
woman must be of the best, and they must '^puU together.'* 
Personal knowledge was the basis of choice. Together with 
the Medical Director of the unit and the Director of the 
Bureau of Red Cross Nursing Service a Chief Nurse was 
selected whose duty it was, subject to the approval of the 
Director, to select the nurses, the dietitian, and the nurses' 
aids. Naturally, she chose those whose value she had proved, 
preferably graduates of the parent school, while the nurses' 
aids were prepared under her direction. It was the only 
possible method where compatibility was an essential, and 
it resulted in a team that "played up" with mutual knowl- 
edge and confidence. 

Beds, bedding, ward furniture, drugs, surgical instruments, 
laboratory supplies and equipment, mess-gear, sterilizers, 
ambulances, touring-cars, motor-trucks, a motor-cycle, 
complete X-ray plant, kitchen, disinfectors, surgical dress- 
ings, and hospital garments, some refrigerating and laundry 
equipment, telephone system, and machine shop — all the 
supplies that would not deteriorate in storage were collected 



SOLDIERS OF THE CROSS 83 

at a convenient point. It was at first estimated that the 
total cost of equipping a Base Hospital Unit would be 
$25,000. In the end each unit averaged $75,000. The 
Red Cross has spent $1,500,000 first and last on its fifty Base 
Hospitals, and all but $54,000 was contributed locally by 
patriotic citizens. 

The names of the nurses were submitted to the Bureau 
of Nursing Service at Red Cross Headquarters, checked 
up with the enrollment files, duly carded, and held for final 
assignment to the Army Nurse Corps; the personnel was 
inoculated for typhoid, paratyphoid, and smallpox ; corps- 
men were enhsted in the United States Army Medical Corps 
Reserve ; doctors and dentists were commissioned as Army 
officers; a commanding officer from the Army Medical 
Corps and a member of the Quartermaster Reserve Corps 
were assigned to the unit ; the two carloads or more of equip- 
ment were stored ; the completed unit was turned over to 
the United States Army Medical Corps — and life went 
on much as before. The personnel scattered to their daily 
jobs, the Director put the key to the warehouse in his 
pocket, and the storage bill and the muster roll were the only 
outward signs of the powerful machine that could be as- 
sembled on such short notice. 

A Base Hospital Unit was mobifized for the first time in 
October, 1916, at Philadelphia. Base Hospital No. 4 (from 
Lakeside, Cleveland) came together on record time and 
with the precision of clockwork. The tentage covered a 
space 1000 feet long and 500 feet wide. .The trial mo- 
biUzation cost $5035.75, and proved beyond doubt the 
practicability of the ^^ canned" hospital. 

When America recognized the existence of a state of 
war with Germany, twenty-five Base Hospital Units were 
well under way. The first call for specific aid came to 
America through the British Commission for doctors and 
nurses. Six of the waiting Base Hospital Units were 



84 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

assigned to duty with the British Expeditionary Force. 
The Surgeon General decided, however, not to use the 
nurses' aids mobiUzed with the Base Hospital Units. Num- 
ber 4 (Lakeside Hospital) was the first to leave New York 
in May, 1917 ; No. 5 followed two days later ; and then 
Nos. 2, 12, 21, and 10. It was over the hospital unit in 
Rouen that the Stars and Stripes first floated as the flag 
of an ally on the soil of France. 

In this first summons, war sent a clarion call to all Red 
Cross nurses. The members of the six units were scattered 
over the face of the land in the pursuit of their personal 
destinies. Hard on the heels of our entrance into the war 
came their summons to report in New York for overseas 
duty. The Base Hospital Unit was suddenly a living 
thing instead of a paper chart. Thousands of others in 
chnic, hospital, and home watched their going, knowing 
that their time would come; while others quietly entered 
their names on the Red Cross rolls, that they too might 
have a share in the great work. 

In the first seven months after America went in, seventeen 
Base Hospital Units were rushed to France, and the others 
were held in readiness for immediate departure. Meantime, 
a serious outbreak of contagious disease in the mushroom- 
grown cantonments and camps in the United States de- 
manded new quotas to battle within our very gates. Our 
first winter in the war was a severe one and thousands of 
boys, just drafted and unhardened to the rough fife, suc- 
cumbed to pneumonia and meningitis. It was hard to 
make it understood why the waiting units could not be used 
for this duty but must be kept free to go abroad. The Red 
Cross worked desperately to recruit enough emergency 
detachments to fill the terrible needs of the camps. No 
attempt was made at unit organization; the nurses were 
assigned as fast as they could be recruited, singly or in httle 
^oups. Later the nursing personnel of the Base Hospital 



SOLDIERS OF THE CROSS 85 

Units was sent to the cantonments. This was an advan- 
tageous move, as it gave the nurses prehminary training in 
a miHtary hospital and also gave the hospitals an adequate 
nursing staff. Throughout that winter and spring they 
worked gallantly in the face of appalling, though unavoid- 
able physical hardships, while not a few gave their lives on 
one of the first American battlefields of the war. 

The Red Cross turned with a will to meet its responsi- 
bilities as 'Hhe chief reserve for the Army and Navy Nurse 
Corps." During the summer months enrollment was 
speeded up to the limit. On October 1, 1918, over 30,000 
names stood on the card index at Headquarters. Of these, 
14,368 had been assigned to the Army and 903 to the Navy, 
while 2454 were awaiting orders. The greater number of 
the nurses were assigned as part of complete organizations. 
Fifty-one complete Base Hospital Units were turned over to 
the Army with a personnel of 3734 nurses. The Navy 
mustered in five Base Hospital Units of 250 beds apiece. 
Nineteen Hospital Units, each manned by 21 Red Cross 
nurses, were organized at a cost of from $3000 to $7000 
apiece. Various groups of specialists in mental and nervous 
diseases, in fracture cases, and orthopedics, were gathered 
together at the request of the Surgeon General. 

The unit system of organization was under the circum- 
stances a splendid plan. It gave the Army Medical Corps 
a running start in the war, which its official limitations 
prevented its making for itself. In the stress of later events 
this system was abandoned. The great civil institutions 
from which Base Hospital Units could be organized had 
for the time being given all the personnel they could spare 
without dangerously weakening home defense. Moreover, 
the War Department was now in a position to organize units 
for foreign service from nurses already serving in camp 
hospitals, who had learned to pull together under the peculiar 
circumstances of military life.'** So the Red Cross bent all 



86 THE. AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

its efforts to the task of recruiting nurses, equipping them for 
active service, and turning them over to the Surgeon General, 
singly or in little groups. 

These nurses, sent fully equipped by the Red Cross into 
the military establishment, have passed through the Red 
Cross clearing-house in a continual quiet stream. After 
the war began, 65 or more were assigned to duty with the 
Army or Navy every day. In August and September, 1918, 
this reached its highest daily average of 100 assignments. 
Most of them reported in New York, where there were 
several Army mobilization centers. They received their 
uniforms, their blankets, and the ^' extras'^ that oiled the 
machinery of living in strange places, from the Red Cross 
Equipment Station. They met co-workers and leaders of 
their profession while waiting at the center for weeks, often- 
times, for a ship to take them ^'across'' ; but sooner or later 
they left for their posts — perhaps to Europe, to Siberia, or 
even to Porto Rico. The ^^ military'' took them; even 
the beloved Red Cross insignia they resigned in the interest 
of discipline, and thereafter their story became one with 
the Army or Navy Corps of which they became a part. 

But, although they laid away her symbol until the war was 
over, the Red Cross did not forget its nurses. By September 
30, 1918, in forty-five camps and cantonments she had ex- 
pended $1,586,563.75 for uniforms and equipment for nurses, 
for recreation houses and their furnishings of bright hangings, 
easy chairs, long reading tables, and electric irons, all spell- 
ing home and a release from narrow barrack quarters. In 
France the Red Cross meant something beside the label on 
a package of surgical dressings or the protective insignia of 
the long lines of incoming ambulances ; it meant friendly 
club-houses, convalescent and rest homes, and a special 
hospital if they fell ill. Always and everywhere it meant 
a strong friend to whom the welfare and honor of the nurse 
was near at heart. 




THE GREATEST RED CROSS PARADE EVER HELD IN AMERICA. 

. 15,000 women, many of whom at that time either had served on the battlefields 
of Europe or were waiting orders for overseas service, marched down Fifth Ave- 
nue through lines of cheering spectators. 



SOLDIERS OF THE CROSS 87 

The military map of the United States indicates the 
location of the camps, cantonments, aero and naval training 
stations, and marines' barracks. Here the nurses did no 
less valiant work than overseas. They took up arms against 
the epidemics of our first war winter. During the autumn 
months of 1918, while the Allied forces swept victoriously 
across Belgium, they fought stubbornly against the ravages 
of Spanish influenza — the dread disease that swept from 
the Atlantic to the Pacific. 

Conditions in America were sometimes as rough as those 
in France, as the following letter from an Army nurse in one 
of the camps will show : — 

"To begin with, when we seven arrived here we found ourselves the 
first group of nurses that ever crossed these grounds. It seems we were 
not expected so soon and nothing was ready for us. The place which 
was to be our home was an empty barrack with nothing but a coal stove 
in every room. But let me tell you that no department store in dear 
old New York ever delivered things more rapidly than they were brought 
in here. It seemed to us that our arrival set the camp a-stirring and 
everybody seemed to be busy in our behalf. Within a few hours we had 
our beds complete, the most welcome thing to us just then, we were all 
so tired. Meanwhile we were shown through the hospital, and then 
through the camp proper, and we were just amazed at the enormity of 
it all. The camp grounds occupy some 17,000 acres and the Base Hos- 
pital takes up about 62 acres and so far has 32 wards and more in process 
of construction. A few months ago this region was a stretch of wilder- 
ness and the first division of men worked this place through to what it is 
at present." 

Another, a Navy nurse this time, wrote : — 

"After the preliminary business of arrival I was taken over to a barrack- 
like building and found a bed allotted to me in a dormitory with about 50 
other nurses. I must admit that this for the first impression was rather 
daunting. The place was littered from end to end with clothes, trunks, 
and grips, to say nothing of the beds themselves ; some occupied by night- 
nurses trying to sleep, some by day-nurses reading, writing, sewing, or 
resting. I could see no possibility of the faintest trace of privacy, neither 
was there any, and later I learned that there was no water for any purpose 



88 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

nearer than the main building. We had rough wooden shelves to put our 
things on and a few nails to hang our clothes. To get a bath we had to 
walk outside of the main building two blocks away. When it stormed : 
the rain came in upon us from the roof, and when it blew the sand came 
in and almost buried us, and the flies were a veritable plague — but all 
this, I am glad to say, was only a temporary discomfort, for now we have 
a very nice quarters, brand new and clean. I often look back and laugh 
and think of my chagrin, and realize that it wasn't so bad as it seemed 
after all, and that it was a good experience for me, for now I appreciate 
the good things as they come along." 

The work of safeguarding our men in training could not 
all be done within camp bounds. It might begin in every 
city within range of a soldier's leave. To this end, the Red 
Cross joined hands with the Federal Public Health Service, 
which held watch and ward over sanitary zones and marine 
hospitals. Red Cross nurses helped in the everyday work 
of keeping the extra cantonment zones cleaned up and 
healthy ; their prompt aid stamped out incipient epidemics 
of many contagious diseases. In Muscle Shoals, Louisiana, 
they were called in to inoculate interminable lines of munition 
workers for typhoid fever. At Newport News, Fort Riley, 
Hattiesburg, and Camp Beauregard they isolated threaten- 
ing cases of meningitis. At Nitro, West Virginia — a 
munition town stretching twelve miles along the Ohio 
River — the 96 nurses at the Base Hospital insured an 
open line of communication between the powder plants 
and the big guns on the Western Front. 

"We have had great changes at the hospital," wrote a nurse from 
France; "all the regular Army nurses were transferred, also our com- 
manding officer, and instead of having 500 beds we have 2000. Doctors, 
nurses, and corpsmen were all put out of their quarters and these were 
made into wards at the beginning of the big rush. We received the 
wounded from the battlefields about twelve hours after they were hurt, 
all in need of operation. This kept up for days ; it just made my heart 
ache to see them coming in in such terrible condition, — officers as well 
as privates, — lay on the floor or on stretchers in the corridors for hours 
awaiting their turn to be operated on. They were so tired, hungry. 



SOLDIERS OF THE CROSS 89 

sleepy, or suffering, that they didn't care what happened to them. The 
first week of the big rush we worked eighteen or twenty hours a day. I 
would be in bed about three hours before I would be caUed again. I 
never felt tired, nor did I want to go to bed, for when I did go I could 
not sleep, the excitement was much too great. 

"It was wonderful how the nurses kept up. Each one was on duty 
from eight in the morning until ten o'clock at night, taking only five or 
ten minutes for her meals. We had at that time only about eighty 
nurses, twenty were in the operating rooms, we were running ten tables 
both day and night, and stopped only on the top floor during an air raid. 
We had an air raid every night while we were so busy and two nights 
they were right over our heads ; the shrapnel fell all around us, and hit 
on the tin roofs like big hail. The boys rushed out and picked up big 
pieces of it." 

'^ American nurses for American men," was a famous 
recruiting slogan for the Red Cross, but only those can 
appreciate its poignancy who have seen the eager welcome 
that leapt to meet the niu:se who 'talked American." 

Especially was this true of the nurses sent by the Red 
Cross Commission to take care of American wounded in 
French Army hospitals. Despite the close bonds of friend- 
ship between France and America, these little groups could 
not help feeling lost — strangers in a strange land. They 
were suffering and immeasurably weary, and they '^ didn't 
get the Hugo." No wonder they were pathetically grate- 
ful for the American nurse; no wonder the nurse's aid 
who went along to speak French for her was kept on the 
jump by day and by night. It is said of one American 
boy, and there were many such cases, who had undergone 
an operation as soon as he reached the French hospital, 
that, on hearing an American nurse speaking to him when 
coming out of ether, he became almost hysterical with the 
relief and excitement that followed his surprise at not find- 
ing himself among Germans. 

These nurses were among the 604 that served directly 
under the Red Cross. Of these some 250 formed the nursing 
service of the Red Cross in France. They manned the 



90 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

great hospitals run by the Red Cross for the French and 
American soldiers and Red Cross personnel; they stood 
ready to go on call to the French or American Army 
Hospitals near the front or to the convalescent hospitals 
in the interior ; they were the sword arm of the Red Cross 
in its fight against tuberculosis and of its work for children 
and refugees. 

Work with the Red Cross was essentially emergency work. 
A Chief Nurse writing casually of the Children's Bureau 
states that ^^The hospitals have a way of doubling over- 
night. '^ A shift in the offensive, a sudden flood of repatries 
into Evian, evacuation of a strip of bombarded territory, 
and the hospitals were swamped and personnel comman- 
deered wherever they could be found. Red tape tripped 
no one on field service for the Red Cross. 

Later in May when the stream of wounded ebbed slowly 
back into France, the Red Cross Department of Civil 
Affairs turned sixty of its nurses over to the nursing service. 
They were all experts in baby welfare, tubercular, or other 
social welfare work. One afternoon found them peacefully 
at their work in the interior, washing babies, dieting old men, 
lending a kindly ear to neighborhood gossip ; the next 
night they were miles away, gone by motor truck to the 
rescue of six American nurses, a few doctors, and twenty 
wounded at Beauvais, and were assisting major operations 
with the aid of flashlights in pitch-black wards during an 
air raid. 

France was the battleground of nations. In France beat 
the heart of the Red Cross work in Europe, but to each of 
the principal Allied countries there went Red Cross Com- 
missions, the flying squadrons of mercy. Milan was the 
clearing-house for the nursing service in Italy. Here, new 
recruits from America learned Italian ways before they 
scattered to centers of relief or instruction ; in England, 
Russia, Greece, Palestine, Rumania, Serbia, and Siberia, 



SOLDIERS OF THE CROSS 91 

the soldiers of the cross to-day are laying foundations of 
knowledge and affection for greater work to come. 

Many French surgeons who have witnessed the work of 
American nurses say that they stand preeminently high in 
the practice of their profession. Their work during the war 
will be supplemented by equally valuable reconstruction 
service. Already foreign countries are beginning to look 
toward the American training schools for nurses for guidance 
in developing schools of nursing. The Italian Government 
has recently asked the advice of the Red Cross Commission 
in the organization of a national association of mu:ses. The 
little groups of American nurses in French military hospitals 
consider the eagerness of the French women to learn their 
methods a high and touching tribute, while the elementary 
courses given in baby saving at Paris, Marseilles, Lyons, 
and Bordeaux, where French women received theoretical 
instruction from American public health nurses and had 
practical work in the civilian hospitals, have served to 
interest French women in developing better public health 
standards of their own. 

The immediate desperate needs of war have appalled the 
world. The nurse must still hold her battle hne long after 
the guns are stilled. To-day she must help defend the 
health of the world. The fight has already been begun 
by the growing ranks of public health nurses now keeping 
watch and ward over congested city districts, industrial 
communities, and scattered mountain farms. A great 
field of health education also awaits her, so that every wife 
and mother may know the elementary principles of keeping 
her family well by the knowledge of proper food and san- 
itation, and of nursing them through minor illnesses by her 
familiarity with simple nursing procedures. The Red Cross 
looks even beyond this long reconstruction. War has 
taught the world the tremendous possibilities of applied 
humanity, and the spirit of the crusaders is still abroad. 



92 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

' On the honor rolls of the Red Cross stand the names of 
197 nurses who, since 1917, have given up their lives. From 
overseas come reports of American nurses decorated for 
valor : several received special military mention, while 
others received Royal orders or the croix de guerre ; here, in 
this country, a number were awarded the Distinguished 
Service Cross. Those nurses, however, who now rest 
quietly in France and England, have received the highest 
honors which war can give to the soldier. 

Among the ranks of these heroic dead looms the figure 
of one nurse to whose vision and tireless work the Red Cross 
Niu'sing Service owes its development. Born in a Httle 
town in New York, educated at the Bellevue Hospital 
Training School for Nurses, — from which so many famous 
pioneer American nurses have been graduated, — and serv- 
ing a long apprenticeship in the practice of her profession 
in its various branches, she came to Washington in 1909, 
as the Second Superintendent of the Army Nurse Corps. In 
1912, she resigned this appointment to devote all her time 
to the development of the Red Cross Niu'sing Service. 
Slowly she built up this reserve corps until it was recognized 
as the foremost medium through which the nurses of America 
might respond to patriotic and humanitarian service in time 
of national crises. ^ She saw this organization, to which she 
had given the best years of her life, meet the gigantic burdens 
of war; she saw the nurses holding up the hands of the 
Medical Department of the Army; she saw them turning 
with equal success to the tremendous problems of peace ; 
and then, when at the height of her power and achievement, 
death calmly, almost unexpectedly, claimed her for its own. 
Among the American dead in the little Army cemetery on 
the hill above the great American Base Hes Jane A. Delano, 
First Chairman of the National Committee and Director of 
the Department of Nursing of the American Red Cross. 

"After Life's fitful fever, she sleeps well." 



CHAPTER VIII 

MOBILIZING THE CHILDREN 

Creation of Junior Red Cross — Reasons for Organizing the Children — 
The Plan Evolved — Means of Replenishing the School Fund — 
Financial Activities Had an Educational Value — Raising Money- 
Only the Beginning — Cooperation with the Chapter — Correlation 
of the Red Cross and American Schools — Reaction on the Home — 
Reaching Foreigners — Thirty-five Minutes a Day — Notes from 
Reports — Awakening for the Country Child — Definite and Per- 
manent Beneficial Results. 

PRIOR to September, 1917, the Red Cross had only grown- 
up people in its membership. It started out with 
every intention of doing good work, but was seriously handi- 
capped by the loss of men taken for service and for the ten 
thousand or more other things that a nation at war had for 
them to do. This, of course, meant that not only the grown- 
up women but the young women who expected to be grown- 
up very soon would have to knit and sew ; and, by and by, 
when more men went away and the demand for supplies 
and shipments increased, they would have to step in and do 
men's work. 

Up to this time, at any rate, nobody had given much 
thought to the children. As the months followed each 
other, however, there were more and more Httle girls knitting 
wristlets, helmets, and sweaters, and doing it about as well 
as their wonderful mothers did. There were little girls 
marching to the Chapter rooms and working there like 
troopers as long as anybody. And then some one saw them 
and what they were doing, and just for a kind of curious men- 

93 



94 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

tal exercise multiplied it by a million. The result was past 
dispute. 

Now all the time that the Red Cross was trying to do for 
the soldiers the things the Army could not do ; while it was 
trying to do for the stricken civilians of other lands what 
their own overburdened governments could not do, — what 
in fact nobody else could do, — the Red Cross needed some- 
body to do what its own organization and all its army of 
adult Chapter members had not time or fingers for. So the 
War Council created a Junior Red Cross, by which process 
''the Greatest Mother'' adopted all the school children 
in the United States, and many more besides in Tokio, 
Shanghai, London, and the Cape of Good Hope. In other 
words, the children of America became active partners of the 
Red Cross. It was to be a family affair, and it meant an 
immense amount of organizing in the field and at Head- 
quarters, as well as an added bin-eau to the Department of 
Development and a new committee in every Chapter. 

As can well be imagined we did not attempt to select work 
that could be done in the schoolroom and at the same time 
be eligible for ''service in France" until after we had made 
a careful study of Red Cross supplies. Obviously, this in- 
volved a delicate adjustment of the established educational 
system ; it necessitated a great many more things besides ; 
in short, the Red Cross had cut out for itself another big 
section of hard work. 

And, although this was brought to pass sometime ago, 
people even now, and not infrequently, have asked us 
"why did you do it? Why did you bring into the or- 
ganization millions of new untrained members, children 
at that?" 

At this distance, and in view of what has been carried 
into effect, it seems almost unnecessary to give the reason : 
but we did it because we believed that no greater opportunity 
could be presented to the children of our country. 



MOBILIZING THE CHILDREN 95 

"Let us give the children of to-day a share in the nation's 
business/' reasoned the War Council. ^' We will let them see 
democracy at work so that they may know what to do to- 
morrow. What better way to train a generation for service 
than to give it a share in the active application of Red Cross 
principles? Would it not catch the child in a moment of 
enthusiasm and organize all this uncentered force in such a 
manner as to insure perpetuity of effort in the right direc- 
tion ?'' 

As for the children themselves, there was never a doubt 
of their eagerness to serve. From the day that that brother 
got into khaki and mother started her daily pilgrimages to 
the Red Cross workroom their question had been, "What 
can I do to help win the war?'' 

That the school was the existing nucleus, the machine 
through which all this force flowing everywhere could be 
most promptly and systematically concentrated, was made 
clear to us from the very beginning. Our primary appeal 
was to the idealism which fills the child's mind and colors its 
view of all things ; to its bubbling patriotism, which knew 
no bounds. But to make it a factor in promoting the world's 
well-being it was necessary that it should be reduced to 
practical terms and placed upon a working basis. Through 
the school the child might be brought at the earliest age into 
an understanding of national life and participation in the 
world's big things. He might learn intelligent care and 
preservation of health through teaching of first aid, dietetics, 
and nursing, all objectively useful ; the understanding and 
care of animals as a source of human supply, and a knowledge 
of growing things. Over all was necessary the inculcation 
of thrift. It required a new course in school — a teaching 
of the first truth that service, the essence of patriotism, is 
the keynote of all real accomplishment. 

The idea of course was not wholly a new one. Some of 
the greatest minds in the world had been trying for years to 



96 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

formulate such an idea in practical shape, and had been en- 
deavoring with a discouragingly small measure of success to 
translate it into action. The task before us was to develop 
some workable plan which should give the new purpose its 
proportionate place in the school life and procedure, so that 
the spirit it represented might permeate all school work and 
radiate through that work and its attendant industries into 
the daily life of every community. In this way there could 
be impressed upon the children the understanding that they 
were an active and responsible part of the whole world's 
life; that they were brothers and sisters of the race; and 
that the human family would be happier and better when 
unselfishness and cleanliness were the rule the world around. 
The plan we evolved was as follows : — 

The Junior membership was a group membership. The 
children joined the Junior Red Cross as a school. They 
raised a sum of money, equal to twenty-five cents per 
member for the school fund and which went to finance 
their own Red Cross work, though under unusual cir- 
cumstances a school could earn its membership by proving 
its value to the Chapter as a working unit. The School 
Auxiliary was a part of the local Red Cross Chapter. In 
all Red Cross matters it was guided by a special group, 
the Chapter School Committee, which represented the 
school interests of the locality. In the quantity, variety, 
and management of its productive work, the School Aux- 
iliary, officered by its own teachers and principal, was 
practically autonomous, which usually resulted in the 
Chapter being endlessly besieged for larger quotas and 
more work. 

This was the simple plan by which the School Auxiliary 

— a powerful motor of Red Cross energy and enthusiasm 

— wa;S organized. It was the same story from Battle Creek 
to San Francisco and back to New York. One morning 
when *'Red Cross" had been in the air for several days, a 



MOBILIZING THE CHILDREN 97 

poster appeared on the wall of the schoolroom. The teacher 
explained that every tune a quarter was added to the school 
fund another little cross could be added to the poster. What 
a scramble there was for odd jobs after school ! Everyone 
wanted to paste at least one cross. Father, mother, and 
the neighbors never had so many offers of assistance — for 
pay ; and for a while the quarters rolled in steadily. 

After membership was assured, the school fund needed 
constant replenishment to meet the demands of the '^supply 
service." But since the school fund could not be kept up 
by odd jobs alone, there being a limit to the [woodboxes to 
be filled, the heads to be shampooed, the leaves to be raked, 
and the babies to be taken care of, it was then that the 
day of real business arrived, and every pupil joined forces 
to swing a project of real magnitude — an entertainment, 
a sale, a school garden, or one of the innumerable ^^ business 
opportunities" that the mind of youth could devise. Per- 
haps it was a bazaar run by all the schools of the city, 
like that of the city of Minneapolis, in the year of 1917, 
where the stock was all made by the children in school 
time. For six weeks before the sale the sewing classes and 
school carpenter shops were scenes of keen rivalry and com- 
mercial ambition. The children worked as never before in 
the knowledge that the fruit of their labor — running the 
gamut of transformations from knitting bag to silver coin, 
from coin to hanks of wool, from unknit yam to socks — at 
last would reach the soldiers overseas. 

In other instances it was some arrangement producing a 
steady income. The children of Los Angeles and the Red 
Cross children in many other places derived unfailing sup- 
port from the collection of unsalable waste. Periodical calls 
were made upon householders, who gladly surrendered the 
week^s accumulation of waste paper, old rubbers, tooth-paste 
tubes, and broken pans. The booty was carried off trium- 
phantly in ''two-boy" power-cars, to be turned into real 



98 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

money by a senior Red Cross Committee. The Los Angeles 
school fund averaged about a thousand dollars a month 
from this source. 

In Southern California the Juniors harvested castor oil 
beans from vacant lots. In Lenhi County, Idaho, they 
collected five hundred pounds of wool from the trees and 
the wire fences of the sheep ranges. Some New Jersey 
children marketed arbutus in Atlantic City. During the 
season of sudden rains a Minnesota youngster capitalized 
the weather by standing on the street corner with an um- 
brella, ready to take people home from the car for five cents. 

Frequently, the children's financial activities were of 
double value — they seemed to have a faculty for hitting 
both birds with one stone. The war gardens added to the 
national food supply. Toy making in school workshops 
aided markets that were depleted by the boycott on ^'Made 
in Germany. '^ The collection of junk saved time and raw 
materials for overcrowded war industries. Though their 
efforts were occasionally amusing and their successes fre- 
quently amazing, it was not to be forgotten that the first 
value of all this work was not the resulting dollars and cents ; 
young America was learning from the school fund the value 
of money, and acquiring some little skill in the business of 
handling it. One youngster remarked thoughtfully, ^'You 
are really giving when you give to the Red Cross, because all 
you get out of it is the good feeling that you have ' done your 
bit.' " No, young man, that is not all. When you put your 
^' movie" nickel in the Red Cross box, you found out some- 
thing about budgets and the relative value of money for you 
and for the starving refugee, something that you did not 
know before the war came to America and the Junior Red 
Cross came to your school. 

But raising money was the beginning, not the end, of the 
Junior's work. As fast as the coins came in they were 
turned into supplies for the Red Cross. Everybody had a 



MOBILIZING THE CHILDREN 99 

share ! The girls sewed and knitted in sewing-class ; the 
boys in their manual-training shops turned out hundreds 
of pieces for the Red Cross convalescent houses, and thou- 
sands of peg legs, potato mashers, equipment chests, bedside 
tables, splints, etc., for the use of the United States Army. 
Even the youngest kindergartner could string together 
the right number of buttons for a garment. 

In four months last year the Junior Red Cross delivered 
255,000 refugee garments — garments that saved lives in 
Europe. In an even shorter time the boys contributed over 
4000 articles, which included writing tables, chairs, benches, 
rugs, etc., for the furnishing of the Red Cross convalescent 
houses in our American camps. Most of this valuable supply 
work for the Red Cross was done by the children as a part of 
their school work. Instead of making model aprons, tabo- 
rets, and pencil-racks, in order to learn the processes of 
laying hems and joining corners, they made pinafores for 
children who really needed them and splints for wounded 
Yanks. The stimulus to proper hemming and joining was 
immediate and wonderful. The following incident relating 
to a little girl of ten years is vouched for: ^^Well, Mary, 
are you learning to sew?'' asked an interested visitor to 
the Red Cross sewing class in Arizona. ^'I don't know," 
repHed Mary, who was taking out a seam for the third 
time that hour, ''but I'm certainly learning to rip." It 
may not be out of place to assert here that work for the 
Red Cross opened the stage door to the great world drama. 

What little girl laying careful stitches did not visualize 
the French four-year-old who was to be wrapped in that 
very cloak, or see a gallant ''doughboy" charging across No 
Man's Land wearing her socks? What boy did not drive 
his plane straighter for thinking of the wounded Yank 
whose life might be saved by this very splint ? 

The Junior cog fitted happily into the Chapter machinery. 
Numberless were the ways in which the children could help. 



100 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

They were tireless enthusiasts for parades and pageants. 
They oiled the wheels of administration, not in a haphazard 
way, but in orderly relays of stenographers, clerks, mes- 
sengers, and odd-jobbers. Bare workrooms acquired tables 
and cabinets from the school carpentry shops, while standard 
packing cases appeared in the storerooms with yarn winders 
and knitting needles without end. The print shops turned 
out creditable stationery and office blanks. '^Call up the 
Junior Red Cross," became a familiar phrase on the lips 
of the Chapter chairman. 

The success of the Junior Red Cross was founded on the 
correlation of two great systems, the Red Cross and the 
American schools. It was made possible only by enthusiasm 
and hard work on both sides. Fitting the Red Cross pro- 
gram into 60,000 schools, and doing it in the first year of the 
new membership, was not a small task. But the school is 
the children's natural workshop — it must teach him to deal 
with life, or its mission has failed. He can learn to control 
human situations only through meeting them. Together 
these two great forces, the school and the Red Cross, gave 
the boys and girls of America their rightful place in the 
nation's work. 

By opening the road of mercy beyond the town orphanage 
to the pain-racked thousands of France, the Red Cross 
offered the children of America an active part in the great 
issues of to-day. It put the schoolhouse in perspective 
with the world situation. For children, as well as for men 
and women, work strengthened the emotional thrill aroused 
by the Stars and Stripes into something more durable and 
active — the will to serve. 

In many cases the thing went farther than the children. 
For instance, in a Chicago school a whirlwind campaign had 
won 100 per cent membership and the children were very 
proud of their new Red Cross buttons. At the end of the 
day one boy brought his badge to the teacher with a request 



MOBILIZING THE CHILDREN 101 

that she keep it overnight, his father having promised to 
give him a beating if he came home with any such nonsense. 
The teacher explained that the button was his own respon- 
sibihty ; that he had wanted to join the Red Cross and he 
could not be a member in school and a non-member out- 
side; and that he could not check his membership with 
her to be called for the next day. The boy saw the issue 
at once and wore his button home with a good deal of 
trepidation. The next day he was looking cheerful. He 
had not been punished, though family disapproval was 
deep. Work progressed, and with it the Junior's en- 
thusiasm. A month later the boy's father appeared at the 
school. The teacher prepared for a struggle. ''Say,'' he 
asked, ''can I get one of those buttons like my boy 
wears?" 

All through the Southwest the Junior Red Cross broke 
through the barriers that confronted foreigners too shy to 
go to Chapter workrooms or talk with strangers. These 
aliens had no contact with the patriotic life of their com- 
munities, until women came to school with their children, 
asking to be allowed to sew for the war sufferers. 

American children of many nationalities are in the ranks 
of the Red Cross workers. Tim Ford, the prize draftsman 
of the Tonopah, Nevada, Auxihary, made furniture for 
Red Cross houses. In spite of his name, Tim was a full- 
blooded Chinese. The Blue Bird Club was a group of 
Chinese girls, somewhere in the Pacific Division, each of 
whom made at least one garment for a soldier. Little 
Italians, busy in their American schoolrooms making clothes 
for other Italians who fled across the Piave before the on- 
coming Austrians, felt a great pride in the big-hearted, long- 
armed coimtry of their adoption. Race prejudices gave way 
before sympathy of ideals. 

There were twenty-six small Japanese in the Rick Spring 
School in New Castle, California. A year ago they organized 



102 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

their School Auxiliary to sew for French refugees. East and 
West met in the great American schoolrooms. Out of the 
war must come a brotherhood that will reach the national 
frontiers; and the children, still free from prejudice and 
bitterness, the inevitable concomitants of war, learned this 
wide sympathy from the Red Cross. 

The plan for fitting Red Cross work into the school system 
allowed a maximum of thirty-five minutes in the school 
program of every day as a service period. The service 
period gave opportunity for discussion of the interests and 
activities of the Red Cross, the aims of the war, thrift, 
conservation, and all the other things in which the child 
could cooperate. This fixed the Red Cross idea in school 
life and in the school mind, — dignified it by making it a 
fundamental part of education, a preparation for life. It 
was a practical reply to the call of human society on every 
person for his contribution toward the world's welfare. 

The school work did not end with the school hours. The 
activities discussed in the classroom were followed up by the 
teachers who, in this service, became the ofiicers of the 
child army; from principal down, they had the handling 
of their Red Cross forces to think of and plan for. There 
was actually work to do, and the system injected a new pur- 
pose and a new interest in the school fife. 

The rural schools, where an overtaxed teacher coped with 
a multitude of subjects, offered a somewhat difficult situation. 
The meeting of that situation happily involved assistance 
on Red Cross afternoons from the parents of pupils, who 
helped in conducting the many lines of Red Cross work. 
This worked two ways; the lessons of cooperation and 
service went straight to the home in double measure. 

It was obvious from the beginning that Red Cross teach- 
ing, to enlist popular favor, must interfere to a minimum 
degree with the process of scholastic instruction, and also 
show convincing results in increased practical ability and 



MOBILIZING THE CHILDREN 103 

development of character. The returns were most gratify- 
ing. The range of benefits, material, moral, and social, 
surprised even the people who had devised the plan and who 
had the faith in its efficacy that enthusiasm gives. Re- 
ports from schools all over the United States make an 
interesting contribution to the literature of education. 
They are a volmne on juvenile psychology, a revelation 
of a keen intelhgence in children which had never before 
been suspected. 

A number of things came to light. The school child of 
America proved himself possessor of resourcefulness, in- 
vention, ingenuity in finding ways and means, faculty of 
organization, capability in execution, competitive energy, 
and understanding of the objectives and the inner meaning 
of the war in such a degree as to put him fairly on a plane 
with his elders ; the demand on his generosity disclosed 
unselfishness and intelligent sympathy for the sufferings of 
children in other countries. 

From an extensive file of reports on Junior Red Cross work 
in schools in all parts of the Union, these sentences, taken at 
random, tell a story : 

"War has laid its hands upon American children as well as those in 
Europe — they are taking the responsibility seriously, as is shown by the 
readiness to sacrifice leisure time and candy money to the success of school 
war work." 

"The need of raising money for the school fund has brought business 
abihty to light in unexpected quarters. Children who hitherto have had 
no sense of money values have worked, saved, and sacrificed to get money 
for the Red Cross." 

"War work leaves no time for loitering. Labor is dignified, and they 
manifest a desire to earn money rather than have it given to them. They 
hoard pennies with the enthusiasm of the miser, but only to give the 
money to the Red Cross. Thrift is no longer a dull personal virtue, but 
a patriotic service." 

"Time and money, of which youth is by nature prodigal, are taking 
on new values to the children." 

"Cooperation is essential to the success of such undertakings as sales 



104 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

and entertainments, and this ability to work together is carried into more 
personal relations." 

i. t^ "The hard work which the children have done has impressed them with 
the necessity for neatness, accuracy, and teamwork." 

"From the tragedy of war, children are learning the lessons of co- 
operation and service." 

"Active generosity and the power of working with other people are 
by-products of these financial enterprises." 

"The Red Cross is not an outside organization. The children have 
made it their own. Their enthusiasm for its interests has drawn out 
their best virtues and proved that children can do much bigger and more 
important work than is generally expected of them." 

"Hitherto we have dwelt chiefly upon the benefits, privileges, and 
immunities of a democracy, without sufficiently stressing the responsibD- 
ities implied in its citizenship. Now every child is realizing that he, 
as well as the greatest and wisest of his seniors, has a share in win- 
ning the war. The habits and the ideas that he is establishing are 
a national gain." 

"For years there has been a conscientious effort to teach patriotism 
to the children of our American schools, but because the teaching was 
only verbal it often remained as a school association rather than as a 
reality of after life. The Red Cross has vitalized idealistic patriotism." 

"There is no evidence of lowered standards of school work — rather 
boys and girls feel the necessity of studying hard to lay a foundation for 
future work. The children accept personal responsibility and the binding 
values of a pledge of service." 

"Common interest and labor shared make a real basis of democracy. 
Home and school are drawn closer together. Through the work of their 
hands the children have won fellowship with their schoolmates, with the 
millions of men and women who are working for the Red Cross, with 
soldiers in the trenches, and the refugees behind the lines. There has 
come a wonderful awakening for the country child. He realizes for the 
first time his own importance as a part of the country — he is surprised 
and stimulated with his new outlook upon life. He develops an altruism 
hitherto unsuspected among these somewhat self-centered out of the way 
boys and girls. He is not to be outdone in his sacrificial service by his 
city cousin, but gives himself, his interests, his time, his money, and his 
energies." 

"Without seeming pessimistic, one may truly say that the average 
modern child had become self-centered. The next generation is learning 
lessons of responsibility and honest service." 



MOBILIZING THE CHILDREN 105 

' These are not editorial observations. They are the first- 
hand reactions of men and women who saw this Junior 
Red Cross work start and watched its progress, who knew 
the old conditions and noted the changes, who saw un- 
imagined blossoms of character and ability grow swiftly 
out of the soil of selfishness, carelessness, and sloth. There 
has come a new vitality into all school life, even into the 
slow old routine of its exercises. The imitative impulse of 
childhood has a new goal : The lad no longer imitates the 
bad man of his village but has a new dream and a new 
model. He wants to keep fit like the soldiers, who have so 
nobly thrashed the Huns. 

Arithmetic loses its terrors when its problems are practical 
and urgent ones. The dismal maps of the school geography 
become a stage on which is passing the most thrilling 
^ ' movie '^ of all history. Continents and peoples that once 
had for the American boy no more vital meaning than Noah's 
Ark animals are alive with interest that is intensely personal 
to him and to the boy next door. The threads of all the 
world run straight to his own house, and in the great picture 
of mankind's activity he feels himself a recognizable figure. 
The responsibilities and the vivid interests of world citizen- 
ship, the thrill of a proud nationalism, have gripped him with 
a hold that can never be loosened. He reads history now, 
as no parental pleadings have ever been able to prevail 
upon him heretofore to do ; it is the new history that every 
tempestuous day of war has written. He is gathering from 
every possible source the answers to questions that are ever- 
lastingly asking themselves in his busy brain. 

This is education in its best form. This is the leading of 
the home-bound mind out into the light of the wide world's 
fife and learning. But there is the reverse action of all the 
enthusiasm of interest. The school child, with the intuitive 
deduction which is a child property, gets at once the truth 
that if the strong and the clean are to win, if right and de- 



106 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

cency are factors in leadership, then these virtues must begin 
at home. It is ^' many a mickle that makes the muckle ^' 
and his town must not be the only decadent spot in Denmark. 
The Red Cross says ^^ community service/' and it translates 
itself instantly into terms of a clean town, a healthful town, 
a progressive town, a busy town, a town full of thrift and 
empty of rubbish, and lending every possible hand to the 
world's big work. 

It is hard to overestimate the value and weight of the 
endeavor which was evoked in all these millions of children 

— at the time that I write their number is given, 10,728,715 

— by this call for personal service. All the vitality, all the 
invention, all the sacrifice, which in the old lazy days used 
to go to finding some way of dodging work, were transformed 
and galvanized into righteous industry. 

By the wisdom and ingenuity of the teacher and those 
who worked with him, this new understanding was converted 
into national habits. It was systematized and dramatized, 
it was provided with workable methods, and it was sur- 
rounded with a living interest which was to continue after 
the stimulus of war had passed away. 

The Red Cross, with all its wide labors for the good of 
others, has done nothing more vital to the making of a 
better and more livable world than this stimulation and 
organization of child energy, this establishment of new aims, 
new standards, and a new field of ambition for the young. 



CHAPTER IX 

SUPPLIES AND TRANSPORTATION 

Trying Problems of Organization — Personnel Department — Demand 
and Supply — Some Illuminating Figures — Address of the Italian 
Premier — "Emergency" Provision — The Earthquake at Guate- 
mala — The Halifax Disaster — "Hurry" Calls — Red Cross Pur- 
chases Combined with Those for the War Department — Bureau of 
Stores — Shipping Space for Red Cross Supplies — Bureau of Trans- 
portation — Report of Baltimore Export Warehouse — Some Figures 
from Report of New York Warehouse — Free Space Accorded Red 
Cross — Insurance Problem a Difficult One. 

ALTHOUGH founded on sentiment and built on purely- 
idealistic elements, the Red Cross was, nevertheless, 
called upon to perform the most mechanical of all functions 
and upon the biggest imaginable scale. 

With free hand and unstinting faith the American people 
gave to the Red Cross large sums to be converted into 
everything that our fighting men might lack, everything 
that a wide and woeful world might stand in need of. The 
money was given with the intention that it would be made 
to go as far as energy and business intelligence could make 
it go. It was a big trust ; a stupendous contract. 

As might be expected, the Red Cross had many trying 
problems of organization, but none that were greater than 
this. Obviously, the men to solve it were those who had 
been identified with industrial and commercial institutions ; 
men who could apply to Red Cross operations the lessons 
of long and successful experience in business life. 

It was to such men as these, therefore, that the War 

107 



108 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

Council turned to constitute the Red Cross Department of 
Supplies and Transportation. In the handhng of this 
huge business of buying and shipping suppHes they utilized 
the wisdom of which commercial competition is the shrewdest 
teacher. They were the men who converted the sentimental 
dollar worth into anywhere from one to three dollars' worth 
of clothing, food, medicine, and a thousand other things, 
and saw to it that they reached the people who needed them 
in the shortest possible time. 

The operations of the Department of SuppHes and Trans- 
portation must not be translated by the familiar and prosaic 
lexicon of trade, but in the language of the need and suffering 
that war brings. Its interminable invoices and correspond- 
ence ever reflect a picture like that, for instance, which 
France presented in 1917. Back of its continuous transfer 
of commodities, of shifting debits and credits, was the 
spurring consciousness of the sick and starving thousands 
of Macedonia and Serbia where brutality had left a grave- 
yard and waste; through the hours of its buying and 
the rapid fire of its typewriters echoed the cries of the 
hundred and fifty thousand unfed babies in the city of 
Petrograd. 

There was a stimulus in this world^s cry that chained 
these men to the job, that humanized and fairly put the 
breath of life into the bills-of-lading, ships^ manifests, and 
monthly statements, and not the reward that was in it, 
for there was none. 

With noiseless and methodical routine they went on 
filUng the orders and getting the ships away. Everything 
marched with speed and with lost motion reduced to a 
minimum. In business this would spell dividends; in 
the Hed Cross its profits were counted in lives saved. For 
these purposes $9,000,000 a month in supplies passed over- 
seas to our fighting men, to our allies, and to the needy 
of many lands, in addition to the great quantities pur- 



SUPPLIES AND TRANSPORTATION 109 

chased abroad and the things purchased for our soldiers 
at home. 

A few men kept this extraordinary work moving. Each 
had faith in the force of the saying 'Hhe fellow who gets to 
the top is the one who can see what is going on outside with- 
out looking through the window.'' Thanks to that faculty 
the trains and trucks were always traihng to the seaboard ; 
the warehouses always had cargoes waiting ; and the ships 
with Eed Cross money changed into victuals, clothes, and 
hospital supphes followed each other to the lands where 
the lack was. Organization wise, the Department of 
Supphes and Transportation was self-descriptive : it meant 
and did just what it said ; it exchanged the money for the 
thousands of things needed and transferred them from one 
part of the earth to another. On the chart, hke any other 
business mechanism, it looked hke A B C. The details 
were multifarious but invisible. The fingers of this Depart- 
ment nevertheless reached out into every field and phase 
of industrial, agricultural, and commercial production and 
into every market place. There was scarcely a product 
which could be used for human comfort that it did not 
gather to its warehouses. The diversity of commodities 
was surprising. The manifests of these shipments for 
Russia, France, and the Mediterranean, were as catholic 
as a mail-order catalogue. They seem fantastical until 
one stops to visualize the countries for which they were 
bound; then every item explains itself; every column of 
figures supphes a vision. 

Take, for example, the figures that represent the January, 
1918, shipment to Italy : — 

Surgical Dressings ^ . 1,495,270 

Hospital Supplies 454,536 

Hospital Garments 384,517 

Articles for Soldiers and Sailors 52,369 

Total 2,334,323 



110 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

And again in February *. — 

Surgical Dressings 1,349,026 

Hospital Supplies 258,075 

Hospital Garments 226,214 

Refugee Garments 4,059 

Articles for Soldiers and Sailors 1,601 

Total 1,838,975 

What do these figures conjure up, I ask, if not the after- 
math of the Italian disaster at Caporetto ! What do they 
instantly summon to mind if not a picture of wounded 
and homeless men safe, at last, and cared for behind the 
barrier of the Piave! But if visualization is lacking and 
words needed to understand the appreciation of the Italian 
people of the prompt action taken by the American Red 
Cross in forwarding supplies, I take the Hberty to quote 
from an address at the opening of the Italian Parliament : — 

^^Our soul is stirred again," said the Premier, ^^with 
appreciation and with admiration for the magnificent dash 
with which the American Red Cross has brought us powerful 
aid in our recent misfortune. We attribute great value to 
the cooperation which will be given us against the common 
enemy by the prodigious activity and by the exuberant 
and consistent force which are peculiar to the American 
people. . . .'' 

But to return to the items : Take them straight down 
from the A's; there is purpose and use for them all. In 
the distance that you travel between adding-machines 
and yolk-powder you can see the whole panorama of war 
and of the people whom it has made forlorn ; and, inciden- 
tally, when you get to the Y's, you have passed an astonish- 
ing amount of money. An entry of ^'ambulances and 
automobiles'^ brings into view with photographic clearness 
the ancient French and Italian highways, cluttered with the 
impedimenta of war and scarred with the ruin which the 
Germans left behind them. The long list of ** agricultural 



SUPPLIES AND TRANSPOJRTATION 111 

supplies," formerly itemized under '^farm-machinery, 
tractors, farm-tools, seeds, and fertilizers," reveals the 
French peasant — sturdy women, men broken on war's 
pitiless wheel — trying with new American methods to 
restore the lost food production of France, or the unbending 
Serbian working out his own victualing problem again on 
the rich acres that the Austrians could not hold. 

There was an unbehevable quantity of hospital supphes 
and equipment and tents and portable buildings to shelter 
them and which moved promptly in case of need. There 
were drugs and surgical apparatus without end for the 
intricate operations which have come into common practice 
with the frightful wounds of this war. They tell their own 
stories of the scientific care which the Allied soldier received. 

There are household goods in variety that is dishearten- 
ing in these days of high prices : Games, clothing of every 
known fashion and size, camp things, auto parts, oils, 
gasoline, blocks, rope bottles, blacking, catgut, Bristol board, 
bailing machines, cement, arm and leg supports, rubberized 
caps, carborundum, earthenware, glass sides, fire extin- 
guishers, enameled goods, crutches, cork, comfort kits, 
thermometers and photographic films, baseballs, dental 
goods, cutlery, nails, mouth organs, hooks and eyes, in- 
cubators, hammocks, ovens, mattresses, grindstones, razors, 
rakes, pillow-cases, tree-sprayers, stretchers, scales, stoves, 
pens, pill-rollers, syringes, shop tools, wax, threshing- 
machines, sweaters, tubing, washing-machines, puzzles and 
sewing-machines, oil-heaters and moving-picture apparatus, 
operating-tables and spool cotton, trench candles, etc., etc. 
This list taken from the files is sufiicient to reflect the strange 
and almost absurdly variegated life that was lived in the 
zone of war. 

The Bureau of Purchases, whose business it was to buy 
all these innumerable things, divided its supplies into two 
sections: one was made up of what it had to buy and, 



112 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

furthermore, to buy far in advance of the need in order not 
to be caught short when the hurry call might come. These 
were the raw materials for Chapter production which the 
women of America had turned out in a ceaseless stream 
with an astonishing total. The other section included sup- 
plies requisitioned by Foreign Commissions and supplies 
used for our boys at home. It is just as impossible to set 
forth in detail the infinite processes and steps by which 
these tons of diverse cormnodities were assembled together 
from everywhere and set afloat as it is to depict with par- 
ticularity the great scenes in which they later appeared. 

It will give one but little idea to know that 1,229,016 
''pounds'^ of men's shoes were shipped — practically all 
to France, E-umania, and Serbia — up to July 31, 1918, 
and that 150,000 pairs went to Vladivostok in August 
for the Czecho-Slovaks. All of the women's shoes were 
bought in Europe. Surgical instruments do not weigh 
much singly, but they cost prodigiously, and in July the 
Red Cross deUvered over 170 tons of them across the seas 
to mend shattered and twisted bodies. In sheer weight, 
it is interesting to observe, cigarettes and tobacco ran a 
close second to automobiles and ambulances, which show 
a total of over 1300 tons. In three months alone 280,000,000 
cigarettes were sent overseas. There were 237 tons of 
bandages and 209 tons of absorbent cotton; 400 tons of 
drugs ; 320 tons of soap ; 274 tons of sheeting ; 48 tons of 
slippers; 32 tons of pillow-cases; 170 tons of surveyors' 
instruments, and 30 tons of towels. There are some of 
these totals that are mystifying, for example, 40 pounds 
of yardsticks; but 63 tons of chewing-gum confirms the 
oft-reiterated declaration that the Red Cross tried to make 
the American soldier feel at home. 

In war time ^'foodstuffs" was the most comprehensive 
word in the English tongue; it meant everything from 
pepper and jam to priceless ham and white wheat flour; 



SUPPLIES AND TRANSPORTATION 113 

even big business economizes on the clerical items when it 
comes to foodstuffs. 

There were times also when emergency was a most de- 
scriptive word. In contemplation of its task the Supply 
Department classed all the provisions it made for civilian 
relief, military relief, and foreign relief as ^' emergency.'^ 
In the crisis of necessity all the red tape was cut. For 
instance, when the earthquake shattered Guatemala, there 
came on Saturday afternoon a cry for help. It was in the 
middle of winter and, naturally, the next day was Sunday, 
but Monday was New Year's Day ; a telegram brought the 
information that a ship was clearing from New Orleans for 
Guatemala on Tuesday noon ; at once a list of food and drugs 
and clothing was telegraphed together with instructions to 
a Red Cross man, a New Orleans banker, that these things 
must be on board when the vessel cleared, which they were. 

When the explosion of December, 1917, shook HaUfax, 
it was the same story : the Red Cross got together carloads 
of everything that could possibly be needed and had them 
in Halifax within twenty-four hours. It would seem, 
therefore, that provocation is all that is needed to effectuate 
results for, again, when the Bureau of Foreign Relief handed 
over a cable to the effect that the people in the Madeira 
Islands were starving to death, there was a response from the 
Supply Department that surprised even themselves. What 
the Madeirans wanted to maintain life in their little island 
was corn. On the Atlantic Coast there was no corn. In 
Illinois they were making fat steers and 60-cent bacon out 
of it. A ship loading in Norfolk for Madeira was scheduled 
to sail in four days and Chicago, in those times of congested 
traffic, was far away. The Supply and Transportation 
Department cracked this nut in three taps : first, it got the 
Navy Department to delay the sailing ; second, it bought, 
by wire, a thousand tons of corn in Chicago ; third, it got 
a priority order from the Railroad Administration; with 



114 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

the result that the corn was hurried into 38 cars and rushed 
out of Chicago on a special train. It was followed through, 
and ten days from the date of receipt of the cable the corn 
was on its way to Madeira. Again : When, shortly after 
our entrance into the war, the Red Cross hurried off a 
Commission to relieve the crying distress in Russia, the list 
of commodities included a large quantity of drugs and 
medicines. There was another case where the ship was 
due to sail. Orders were telephoned to the chemists in 
Philadelphia ; the supphes loaded on motor-trucks for New 
York; and $300,000 worth of supplies were put on board 
in forty-eight hours. 

There are many such instances. I remember that at 
the time the Palestine Commission was getting under way, 
it happened that sudden demand was made on us for essential 
supphes which were not at hand. It was on Friday that 
the requisition came, the boat was due to sail on Sunday, 
and the shortage was not definitely discovered until late 
Saturday afternoon. But all this mattered little to the 
people at the Atlantic Division Headquarters when put in 
charge of this order. In a jiffy they had enlisted the service 
of a fleet of automobiles, located a number of dealers, 
induced them to open up their establishments on Sunday 
morning, and when the ship passed Scotland Light every 
last item was in the hold. 

Nominally, a dollar is worth a hundred cents. There 
were many obvious reasons for making the Red Cross 
dollar worth more if it could be done, and not the least 
sound reason was that it was a Red Cross dollar and was 
being gladly and graciously given in the interest of mankind. 
So when the markets became excited in the latter part of 
May, as everyone knows, and prices rose entirely beyond 
reason, the purchasing department sought to protect itself 
in its purchases ; with the result that an arrangement was 
effected with the War Industries Board whereby Red Cross 



SUPPLIES AND TRANSPORTATION 115 

purchases were combined with those made for the War 
Department. 

With the talent at hand and the spirit of helpful co- 
operation everywhere it would be strange, indeed, if there 
had not been many savings made. But why attempt to 
recite them. It must not be overlooked, either, that the 
various departments of the Government extended every 
facility, which resulted in the saving of precious time and 
hundreds of thousands of dollars. 

In the days of submarine and overtaxed shipping, it had 
become the rule to forward nothing from America that could 
be bought on the other side. When this plan was first 
considered we first explored the French market. But, 
appalled at the volume of red tape necessary to conform to 
French regulations, we turned to England. That Govern- 
ment solved the situation by putting the American Red 
Cross on a parity with the British Red Cross. The Red 
Cross dollar went up in value. England got the business at 
a reduced margin of profit, and a vast amount of trans- 
Atlantic cargo space was saved for munitions and guns and 
Army supplies. As a matter of fact, during the year ending 
June 30, 1918, the purchases abroad for France, Italy, 
Great Britain, and Belgium exceeded in value the purchases 
made in America during the same period for shipment to 
Europe. 

We come now to the Chapter Supplies. These were 
small troubles to the Department of Supplies. There was 
a Bureau of Stores which did nothing else but look after 
the supply of material furnished to Chapters and the avail- 
ability of the resultant product for shipment. Every 
woman who knitted or sewed for the Red Cross knew that 
the whole business of Chapter production, which had a 
bureau all its own, had undergone a change since the early 
days of 1917, when every patriotic soul in the Chapter was 
buying yarn for herself and nowhere two sweaters looked 



116 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

alike. Those were parlous days ! If there were three 
business houses in a Chapter town that handled wool and 
none had a sufficient quantity to fill a Chapter order, all 
three would rush a call into the New York market; the 
demand thus ran wild and the market was fluctuating and 
uncertain. Then the War Industries Board put its adjust- 
ing hand on the wool supply. By and by, through a studious 
process of coordination. Chapter production was put on a 
business basis. The Bureau of Chapter Production pro- 
vided specifications for all Chapter production, so auto- 
matically definite that sick soldiers looked like twins in 
hospital garments and socks were always mates. There 
may have been a better way to run this business, but no 
one ever found it. A million or more of silvery-haired 
grandmothers who had made stockings for fom* generations 
had to change their method, showing that it is never too 
late to learn. To further aid in adjusting supply to demand, 
the Bureau of Stores was formed. The value of Chapter 
effort, always great, was multiplied many fold. It was 
estimated most conservatively at anywhere from sixty to 
a hundred million dollars. 

The principal business of the Bureau of Stores was inter- 
mediary. It was more a Bureau of Records, limited records, 
but of large importance. It had a set of books, — one for 
each Division, — which was turned in from the Division 
monthly and in which were set down the demands for 
material for articles which the Bureau of Production had 
allotted for manufacture; against the totals of these re- 
quirements the Bureau of Stores inscribed its stock on hand, 
and thus was enabled to know from month to month the 
state of its supphes by Chapters, which, when made up into 
finished articles, were shipped to the Division Warehouses, 
where they awaited demand. It was a very simple cog, 
but it kept the whole system of Chapter production pro- 
tected against lack of materials ; and, in conjunction with 



SUPPLIES AND TRANSPORTATION 117 

the Production Bureau, was of use in assuring a supply of 
finished goods on hand. I said in the beginning that it 
required purely mechanical processes to transmute senti- 
ment into relief. This is an intensified illustration. 

When the market goods were bought and the Chapter 
goods were made the thing was to get them to the people 
who needed them. The nationalization of the Red Cross 
has been a great aid in securing for it every possible advan- 
tage in ocean tonnage. The Allied Governments had been 
called upon to give space for Red Cross supplies to France, 
Italy, England, Russia (Kola, Archangel, and Vladivostok), 
Serbia, Greece, Switzerland (for American prisoners, Ser- 
bian prisoners, and the Swiss Commission), Palestine, Den- 
mark (for American prisoners). Virgin Islands, Madeira, 
Guatemala, Haiti, and Madagascar. In negotiating for 
space the Bureau of Transportation perfected arrangements 
for shipment in steamers controlled by the French High 
Commission, the United States War Department, the 
British Ministry of Shipping, the Italian Ministry of Ship- 
ping, the Greek Legation, the Russian Embassy, the United 
States Shipping Board, and the Commercial Steamship 
Lines. The Red Cross Ports of Export were New York, 
Newport News, Norfolk, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston, 
New Orleans, Montreal, Seattle, and San Francisco. 

Beginning with a simple organization in 1917, it re- 
quired many changes, in the face of increasing difficulties, 
to perfect the present system of transportation. No 
smallest item that could contribute to increased efficiency 
was omitted, nor anything that would reduce by the smallest 
amount the cost of the operation. War tax, for example, 
was exempted on all Government freights. The Red Cross 
appealed to the Treasury Department for similar recognition 
on the ground that it was a governmental agency, and thereby 
secured exemption on all domestic transportation. It did 
not apply to foreign shipments. Revenue tax amounting to 



118 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

hundreds of thousands of dollars was also omitted on soldiers' 
tobacco. Under private ownership it was the custom of the 
railroads to extend to shippers two weeks' credit on freight 
charges. The Railroad Administration, upon taking con- 
trol, cancelled this custom but exempted Government freight. 
The Red Cross claimed like exemption and the administra- 
tion circulars were reissued to that effect. This concession 
contributed substantially to the smooth working of the Red 
Cross system. It enabled the Division to check their 
goods on shortage and simplified the processes of claim 
and recovery. To further profit in this direction, the 
Bureau of Transportation placed a traffic man in each 
Division and Port Warehouse for the purpose of checking 
freight and express bills, claims for overcharge, loss, and 
damage on raw materials delivered to, and finished supplies 
received from the Chapters, as well as supplies handled 
through the warehouse. Each Division and Port Warehouse 
was responsible for materials received and shipped, and 
made its own recoveries. Expense bills remained in the 
records of the Division and Port Warehouse so that they 
might be available for use in prompt presentation of claims 
to common carriers. Many of these fundamental changes 
in transportation regulations solved embarrassing problems 
in the actual handling of material. 

At first, it was the custom of the division warehouses, and 
even of the Chapters, to ship to New York export warehouses 
small quantities of articles as finished. It was afterwards 
decided that no Chapter goods should be shipped unless in 
carload lots and without first obtaining necessary authority 
from the Bureau of Transportation — a step which estab- 
lished control of the movement to ports of embarkation, 
and did away with congestion, demurrage, and many 
difficulties in the adjustment of steamer accommodation. 
Under the old system Chapter goods were piled into New 
York in large aggregate, entailing heavy operating expenses, 



SUPPLIES AND TRANSPORTATION 119 

particularly for truck delivery. The cartage charge alone 
at New York City, railroad station to warehouse, was 35 
cents per case. This was eliminated. The congestion in 
New York was troublesome until arrangement was made 
with the Itahan Ministry of Shipping to transport all cases 
for Italy from Baltimore. 

; A substantial saving was effected in securing short hauls, 
as will be shown in the following order for 400 tons of rice 
for Italy : under the old conditions this shipment normally 
would have moved from the port of New York. The Food 
Administration quoted on rice dehvered in New York, but 
the rice was in New Orleans. Through the Itahan Ministry 
of Shipping, the Bureau of Transportation secured space 
in a vessel clearing from New Orleans, and thereby saved 
freight revenue amounting in all to $4559, based on all-rail 
rate to New York at 56^ cents per hundred pounds. 

A great amount of material which, ordinarily, might have 
required rail transportation to the eastern seaboard for 
export, was shipped from the Pacific coast in direct vessels. 
Much of this consisted of the products of the Chapters in 
the Northwestern and Pacific Divisions. The Bureau 
secured from the United States Shipping Board an allotment 
of seventy-five weight tons per vessel in the new merchant 
ships which were being constructed on the Pacific coast. 
The vessels from Seattle, Washington, and San Francisco, 
Cahfornia, carried to France flour ground out of Austrahan 
wheat; Pacific salmon and dried fruits from Cahfornia 
went directly overseas in the same way, which resulted in 
a saving in overland freight transportation of one dollar and 
fifty cents to three dollars per hundred pounds. 

There was scarcely an angle from which one could ap- 
proach the purchase and transportation of Red Cross sup- 
plies to-day without finding a saving in money, resultant 
from business efficiency and from the uniform consideration 
shown by the Allied governments, the departments of our 



120 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

own Government and commercial interests everywhere. 
An interesting showing is made in the operation of the Red 
Cross export warehouse, even at the busiest ports. The 
operation report of the Baltimore export warehouse from 
April 1 to September 30 revealed a satisfactory economy 
in the handling of seaboard traffic. The total expense in 
the warehouse for this period — including warehouse and 
office rental, demurrage, cartage, lighterage, salaries, labor, 
and every other miscellaneous expense — showed a total 
of seventeen thousand and some odd dollars. There were 
shipped at this time 135,072 cases, with a total value of 
$6,727,928; the total weight was 7996 tons. The cost 
of handling was 12f cents per case, and by the ton $2.17. 
This ton cost — every ocean shipper will confirm this — 
was actually lower than a stevedore company would contract 
for the warehousing and loading or unloading of any vessel. 
The low cost per case is almost extraordinary when it is 
borne in mind that many of these cases were five-ton 
trucks, kitchen trailers, and other heavy equipment requir- 
ing steam derricks for handling. 

The New York export warehouse in its report covering 
the year ending June 30, 1918, disclosed an increase in 
shipments handled monthly from 26 to 55 ; and an increase 
in packages handled from 43,000 to 48,000 per month, 
but the cost per shipment decreased from $1,655 to $.508 
over 242 shipments; the cost per package from $1 to 53 
cents ; the cost per ton from $15.31 to $9.06 ; and the cost 
per $1 value declined from $.0373 to $.0157. 

But the greatest saving in all the business of transportation 
is shown in the record of free space accorded to the Red 
Cross. Before the Government took over the shipping 
lines the rates for ocean transportation appeared to have 
no limit. The average quotation was $110 a cubic ton, and 
it ran from that rate up to all the traffic would stand ; 
on the assumption of governmental control the Red Cross 



SUPPLIES AND TRANSPORTATION 121 

fixed a commercial average rate value of $100 per ton. As 
the total shipments from April, 1917, to February 28, 1919, 
amounted to 196,000 odd tons, it will be seen that the value 
of this space ran well over $19,000,000. 

The problem of insurance upon these tremendous ship- 
ments of Red Cross materials was, necessarily, a difficult 
one. It conformed to the usual business practice of insuring 
shipments at sea against risks of war and marine peril. 
The greater portion of the war risk was covered by the 
Government War Risk Insurance, and the balance was 
offered to leading insurance companies at net rates and 
without commission to any one. As the volume of Red 
Cross shipments increased, it became possible to establish 
a plan of partial self-insurance whereby the Red Cross, 
guided by its technical insurance advisers, assumed a part 
of the war risk on each vessel. Altogether there was carried 
on Red Cross shipments $32,000,000 of insurance, of which 
by far the greatest part of the premium was war risk. Out 
of $1,400,000 of premium, $1,200,000 was on insurance 
of this nature, and only $200,000 on marine risk. Chapter 
goods were insured on cost of material only, since the value 
of the labor is given by the Chapter workers. 



CHAPTER X 

THE DISABLED SOLDIER 

New View of the Disabled — The Vocational Rehabilitation Law — 
Cooperates with the Department of Labor — Experience of European 
Countries — Five Recognized Forms of Disability — Places Where 
Treatment Is Given — Cure for the Mind and the Will — Illustrated 
in the Reeducation of the Blind — The Keynote in Cure — Fields 
Open to the Blind — Training in France and England — Red Cross 
Institute for Crippled and Disabled Men — Home Service in Reedu- 
cation — Treatment of the Tuberculous — Institute for the Blind — 
Hospital for Shell-Shock Patients — General Resume. 

NJURED men have been an inevitable residuum of 
wars since wars began. To militant rulers of old they 
were merely an item in the wastage and were left to fate 
and their own powers of recuperation. 

The aim of modern science and of sociology is not only to 
leave nothing undone for our crippled soldiers that will 
make them productive members of society, but to go a long 
step further, while mending their bodies, and lift them forth- 
with out of the ruck of dependency and give them standing 
as co-equal workers in the working world. 

It would be at once foolish and insincere to pretend that 
this is a small undertaking. With its obstacles and its in- 
evitable corollaries it presents a heroic problem. It is the 
unhappy testimony of history that after the first outburst 
of emotional gratitude the consideration shown to crippled 
veterans loses grace and spontaneity. The madness of 
popular appreciation — vocal at first in free-handed proffers 

122 



THE DISABLED SOLDIER \ 123 

to the home-coming soldier — dwindles as the war recedes 
and the concentration of business intensifies. 

So far as the disabled soldier is concerned there are two 
principal elements involved in making a new man of him : 
one is the extent to which surgical science and reeducation 
can restore his efficiency. But the first and primary essen- 
tial is the will of the man to profit by his assistance, his 
ambition, his desire to be a doer rather than a dependent. 
We must season our gratitude to the wounded soldier with 
common sense, that it may not evaporate in the violence 
of its initial warmth. If we treat this wounded soldier like 
a man and a brother he will be one — for he has proved his 
quality. 

People **by-and-large'^ will scarcely credit the advance 
that has been made physically in the restoration of the dis- 
abled and their refitment for work. In order that every 
use may be made of the world's learning and invention in 
this field, and that the work may be pursued to its conclusion 
without interference, Congress enacted, and the President 
approved, the Vocational Rehabilitation Law, embodying a 
national plan which provided not only for the reduction of 
a man's disability to its owest terms by surgical and medical 
treatment, but, also, when this shall have been accomplished, 
to furnish him with the most perfect artificial limbs and 
appliances obtainable to render his injury in some degree 
inconspicuous, but primarily to restore locomotion and 
manual ability. 

Upon this follows reeducation to whatever extent may be 
necessary to assure substantial earning power and, finally, 
the procurement of employment for him in the trade or busi- 
ness for which he has been equipped. Wise provision has 
been made in the law that this acquirement of profitable 
occupation shall not reduce his pension, but shall supplement 
it to an extent which will enable him to live on a parity of 
comfort with other men pursuing similar lines of industry. 



124 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

In charging the Federal Board for Vocational Education 
with the mobilization of resources for all necessary courses of 
training, the Government places at its disposal all the 
employment facilities of the Department of Labor. It is 
intended and provided that there shall be complete coopera- 
tion between the Army and Navy Medical Boards and all 
other departments that in any way contribute to the plan ; 
that the work, curative and educational, be so coordinated 
and combined that rehabilitation shall constitute one un- 
interrupted process, beginning in the base hospital and 
ending only when the disabled men, restored, equipped, and 
trained to the point of industrial efficiency, shall be definitely 
and permanently placed in lucrative employment. The up- 
coming generation will not see so much of the paupered 
veteran soldier, forced by his disability to depend on a 
precarious and ever diminishing charity, all too thinly veiled 
by the purchase of lead pencils on a street corner. 

In making large provision for this work, the Government 
took lesson from the experience of European countries. 
Plans are already under way for the creation of large centers, 
specially located, designed, and equipped to meet the 
problem. 

The schedules contemplate, with some latitude for com- 
plications and minor variations, five general forms of dis- 
abihty: (1) Surgical, involving primarily the loss of one 
or more limbs; (2) Blind; (3) Shell-shock, including the 
various phases of psychoneurosis ; (4) Tubercular; (5) 
Deaf. In the reception hospitals at ports of debarkation, 
the men were classified and distributed to various general 
hospitals where provision had been made for specific treat- 
ment, surgical, medical, and occupational. The following 
institutions have been designated and equipped: General 
Hospital No. 2, Fort McHenry, Maryland ; General Hospi- 
tal No. 3, Colonia, New Jersey; General Hospital No. 4, 
Fort Porter, New York; General Hospital No. 6, Fort 



THE DISABLED SOLDIER 125 

McPherson, Georgia ; General Hospital No. 7, Roland Park, 
Baltimore, Maryland; General Hospital No. 8, Otisville, 
New York ; General Hospital No. 9, Lakewood, New Jersey ; 
General Hospital No. 11, Cape May, New Jersey; General 
Hospital No. 16, New Haven, Connecticut ; General Hos- 
pital No. 17, Markleton, Pennsylvania ; General Hospital 
No. 19, Azalea, North Carolina; United States Hospital, 
Waynesville, North Carolina; Army and Navy General 
Hospital, Hot Springs, Arkansas; Walter Reed General 
Hospital, Takoma Park, Washington, D.C. ; Letterman 
General Hospital, San Francisco, California ; Fort Bayard, 
New Mexico ; Plattsburg Barracks, Plattsburg, New York; 
St. EHzabeth's Hospital, Washington, D.C. ; Whipple Bar- 
racks, Arizona. 

The establishments at Fort McHenry, Colonia, Lakewood, 
Walter Reed, Letterman, Fort McPherson, and Hot Springs 
are for general reconstruction. Blind cases in which surgery 
is required are treated at Cape May, but all reeducational 
work with the blind is carried on at Roland Park, Baltimore. 
Otisville, New York ; New Haven, Connecticut ; Markle- 
ton, Pennsylvania; Waynesville, North Carolina; Fort 
Bayard, New Mexico; and Whipple Barracks, Arizona, 
are reserved for the tuberculous. Deafness is treated at 
Cape May, and insane cases are taken to Fort Porter, 
Plattsburg Barracks, and St. Ehzabeth's, Washington. 
The Indian School at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, has also been 
made available for reconstruction work. 

It was the custom in former times to discharge immediately 
from the Army all men who developed chronic disease or 
physical disabiUty. At present, under the War Depart- 
ment's ruling, no member of the service disabled in the line 
of duty will be discharged until he has attained the fullest 
measure of recovery possible. 

In the treatment of these forms of disability there is in- 
volved a wide range of medical and surgical skill. The 



126 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

infinite complexities of physical derangement tax to their 
last resource the ingenuity of physicians and surgeons ; they 
bring into service the latest fruits of scientific development 
and research. But in one sense all are alike. Their success- 
ful management, the attainment of right results in the end, 
had a common basis and background — the mind and will of 
the patient. The victim of war, from the moment his life 
is assured, becomes the object of care and attention with a 
view to making him useful to the world he lives in. 

A perfect illustration is the man blinded, from whatever 
cause. If in the first stage of hospital treatment it is thought 
possible that his vision will be permanently lost, the work of 
reeducation begins without his knowledge. From that 
time on, — even while he is yet ignorant of the truth, — the 
doctors are 'teaching him to be blind." While his eyes are 
still covered with an unnecessary bandage, perhaps, he is 
taught to do for himself things that the blind do, such as 
shaving and finding his own way about. It is one of the 
everlasting marvels of life that dormant nerves and muscles 
and brain cells, waked by necessity, learn in so short a 
space to do their work. By the time the blinded man dis- 
covers the truth the crushing force of the blow has been 
broken. From that point onward, — on the journey home 
and at every stage he must pass before the last hope of saving 
his sight is abandoned, — he, unconsciously, is being trained 
in the rudimentary lessons of blindness. 

With other forms of injury the same general theory is 
pursued, though perforce more slowly and in less degree. 
But back of all the physical problems still stands the mental 
one. In the first days, weeks, or months after realization, 
there comes the hard, incessant fight against depression, 
discouragement, relaxation of hope. The winning of this 
battle is the most vital factor in the work of reconstruction, 
in the remaking of the man's life. This mental infection of 
despair is the malady that requires most skillful medicine, 



I 



THE DISABLED SOLDIER 127 

and that if uncured may make all the drugs and surgery of 
no avail. 

It is a labor requiring infinite patience and tact and most 
dehcate intuitions. But it can be done. The keynote of 
the majority of cases has without doubt been struck in a 
letter written by a teacher, himself a cripple, to the Surgeon 
General : — 

"You must," he says, "not only fit a man to become a wage-earner, but 
fully as important, you must fit him to enjoy the wages he has earned 
with his fellows. . . . Unless you prove to the cripple that there is joy 
ahead, you cannot help him. . . . When a man is wounded and crippled 
the reaUzation of the crippling comes upon him at a time when the nervous 
system is least able to bear the additional shock which the realization 
brings. . . . The mental suffering is very acute, though the doctors and 
nurses may not know of it. . . . Couple with a shattered nervous system 
weeks of inactivity, with the idea of helplessness, with the idea of life ab- 
normal, outside the pleasures of the world ; it is wonderful that all cripples 
are not helpless. You must kill the idea of helplessness almost as soon as 
it is born, for in a few weeks it becomes very strong. You must show 
moving pictures of men who are crippled enjoying themselves in normal 
ways, dancing, skating, paddling a canoe, swimming, playing billiards, and 
hundreds of things they cannot or do not know about. I could multiply 
these things a thousandfold, things which you would refuse to believe. 
But they must be 'put across' to the men early, and it must be done by 
men who have had experience first hand." 

An industrial engineer in the Government employ, whose 
business it is to make surveys for the purpose of finding fields 
open to the blind, states as a result of tests and investigations 
that approximately three per cent of the manufacturing 
industries involve work which blind men can do satisfactorily. 
It has, in fact, been found that in some branches of work blind 
men are more efficient by reason of their closer concentration 
and that the sense of touch, when developed to requisite 
nicety, is often more alert and more discriminating than 
sight. 

Fortunately for the work of reeducation in this country, 
France and England faced the problem before us. In their 



128 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

experience the perfection of mechanical arms with a ^' chuck ^' 
for holding work or tools has opened to armless men occu- 
pations in which they would at first sight have been ac- 
counted helpless. One-armed men, and even blind men, 
develop incredible skill in the operation of a typewriter 
from dictaphones, the shift key being worked by pedal. 
The running of lathes, agricultural tractors, drills, and 
other machinery, carpentry, tool making, the manufacture 
of surgical instruments and tools of precision, watch-making, 
telegraphy, photography, typesetting — all these have been 
found possible. At the Ecole Joffre, near Lyons, which the 
French established early in the war, accounting and com- 
mercial work are taught, also toy making, bookbinding, 
shoemaking, mechanical drafting, woodwork, tailoring, 
wood carving, gardening, and machine tool work. It has 
been found here that industrial drafting and design attract 
the greatest number of pupils. The National Institute in 
Paris teaches tailoring, shoe and harness making, tinsmith- 
ing, cabinet work, accounting, and the operation and repair 
of farm machinery. 

Both in England and France there is a decided trend among 
the disabled men toward agricultural pursuits, particularly 
the raising of poultry. It is the aim of the reeducators in 
America to fit many men for agricultural life in some form. 
English schools teach carpentry and cabinet making, carving 
and gilding, frame, toy, and basket making, metal work, 
building and construction, decorating and electrical fitting. 
At Roehampton and Brighton are the greatest centers of 
training for the amputation cases. It is found that both in 
England and France the disabled men have proved expert 
in the making of artificial limbs. This is a specialty in this 
country, which produces the best appliances of this sort. 

In anticipation of the task which lay ahead, the Red Cross 
established in 1917, with funds made available by gift, the 
Red Cross Institute for Crippled and Disabled Men, in 




Til 

o 



THE DISABLED SOLDIER 129 

New York City. The purposes of the Institute are chiefly 
experimental and in the Une of surveys. It has compiled 
and repubUshed papers setting forth the results of the best 
reeducational work in Europe ; it has made a census of the 
cripples resident in New York City, with records of their 
accomplishment in various occupations; and it has begun 
experiments in vocational training in a large number of 
trades to determine what the cripple may derive from them. 
Teams of disabled persons, thoroughly trained, are put at 
work side by side with the sound to determine their relative 
capabihties. In some lines of work, the cripple has proved 
the better of the two. It is essential that after the class- 
room work is advanced the beginner in a new trade should 
have experience in shop practice, and in securing such facih- 
ties from employers these surveys will be of service. 

In selecting a trade for the disabled man the most thorough 
search is made into his past history, his business or industrial 
record, his home hfe, into every detail, in fact, which may 
have weight in the planning of his future. It is desired, 
wherever possible, to return the man to his own town and 
to his own home and to select for him some branch of industry 
in which the place affords employment and a promise of 
permanence. The conditions of the home, its atmosphere, 
the mental attitude of members of the family and neighbors, 
the opportunity extended for further study and for helpful 
social relations are of the utmost importance as bearing on 
the encouragement which is so necessary to him. In all 
these lines of investigation, in preparing a man's family to 
be a help rather than a hindrance to him, the Red Cross 
Home Service is organized and equipped, by the very nature 
of its mission, to carry on a wide and helpful work. In 
looking after the welfare of the soldier's family it has 
estabhshed a relation with them as it has with the soldier 
himself during his training and transportation, at the front 
and on the way home, which makes for confidence and trust. 



130 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

In what reeducators call ^^ follow-up work," — seeing the 
man well along on his new adventure in life and giving him a 
lift when he needs it, — the Red Cross, represented every- 
where as it is by the Chapters, is '^ on the ground" the whole 
country over. It saw the soldier off and it welcomed him 
home. It is merely sticking by him now. 

The records thus far available indicate that the wounded, 
and especially those who have lost Hmbs, are in relatively 
small proportion of the total number engaged, and the bhnd, 
even a smaller number. Medical cases outnumber the sur- 
gical, while tuberculosis is chargeable with a particularly 
large share of the discharges. Fortunately, the United 
States had developed before the war thorough practice in 
the treatment of tuberculosis ; and in planning its work for 
returning soldiers the Government has made preparation for 
them. There were nearly six thousand beds available in the 
hospitals already set aside for tuberculous patients. The 
function of the Red Cross in this work was to prevent, through 
its connection with the families of soldiers, the withdrawal of 
the man from treatment before his restoration should be 
complete and he cease to be a menace to the well-being of 
others. 

As an aid to the work of the blind, the Red Cross has 
established in Baltimore an Institute for the BHnd, of which 
the medical officer responsible for the Army program for the 
blind is the director. The institution is situated con- 
veniently near to the General Hospital. It provided 
quarters for the relatives of soldiers who come to visit the 
hospital. In this, and in furnishing transportation for such 
relatives where necessary, it is helping to overcome the first 
and, perhaps, the most serious obstacle to reeducation, — the 
listlessness or discouragement of the men themselves. 

Of all the American soldiers returned from France, it is 
recorded that twenty-five per cent are suffering from some 
phase of '^shell-shock" or nervous disorder. The treatment 



THE DISABLED SOLDIER 131 

of these, in many cases, is extremely difficult and requires 
time, patience, and extensive equipment of appliances for 
electric treatment, baths, etc. The special center for these 
cases is the hospital at Plattsburg Barracks, which includes 
in its personnel only those who have had to do with treat- 
ment and care of similar cases in civilian life. 

Medical authorities estimate from the British Army 
records that the great majority of all men discharged will 
return to civil hfe with but Httle more need for medical care 
than might be expected in the case of a man of somewhat 
more advanced age in ordinary surroundings ; but for the 
'^ disabled," the provision that is being made is broad and 
liberal, in the highest degree human and kindly, and governed 
by intelligent counsels. If understood and wisely availed 
of by the men for whose benefit it is devised, a great part 
of the poverty, demoralization, and unhappiness which, in 
other times, have followed long in the wake of war, will have 
been done away with and comfort and contentment exist in 
lives which, at first, may seem to have been utterly bhghted. 



i PART II 
CHAPTER XI 

ON THE BATTLEFRONT 

Workers at Every Point in the Red Cross Service to the American Soldier 

— A Gap in the Continuity of This Service — Cooperation with the 
Army Medical Corps — Research Bm-eau Maintained — Work of 
Commmiication Bm'eau — Picture of a Canteen — Rest Stations — 
Girl Heroes — Mobility of Red Cross Formations — The Narrative 
of Compiegne — The Hospital at Annel — The Rolling Canteen — 
Extract from The Washington Post — The Ambulance Drivers — 
Ambulance Sections Absorbed in the Army Medical Corps — Hos- 
pital Service in the Army — Appropriation for Ravi Taillement Serv- 
ice — Hospital Supply Service — Fifty Base Hospitals Furnished 
to the Army — Examples of Special Efficiency — Scientific Triumphs 

— The Cause of Trench Fever Discovered — Diversions in Hospitals 

— Comforts Furnished — Letter Writing for the Boys — American 
Wounded in French Hospitals — Searchers for the Bureau of Com- 
munication — Searchers and Help for Prisoners — Care for the 
Dying and Dead. 

THE hugeness of the war and the detailed awfulness of 
it will never be told. For those, like myself, who 
touched the edges of it, there can, of course, be no telling 
of it save that each recite his vision of the little fragment 
that was his lot to see. It is written in the Book of Ages, 
and military science will analyze its strategy, but before the 
tragedy in its entirety can ever be fixed in human record 
the waters of God-f orgiven-forgetfulness will have washed 
away a great part of it. 

It is better that it is so. The hope of mankind lies in the 

132 



ON THE BATTLEFRONT 133 

revelation of inborn human kindness ; the task of mankind 
is to heal the scars that the war has left. Fortunately, as 
the horror has grown so has grown the unremitting cry of 
sympathy and pity. And certain it is that men of vision 
have never ceased to believe that the world will be saved 
and that hope's patient litany will save it. 

For the soldier, the Red Cross had workers in the field 
at every point where they could by any chance serve him : 
at the port where he landed, in the stations through which 
he passed on his way to camp, at the camp itself, at the 
stations between the camp and the trenches, and, finally, at 
the very front. The canteen convoy ers brought up supplies 
of hot food for him despite the weather, shells, or gas. 
They were ready through the cold, rainy night to comfort 
him ; while a little back from the lines was the canteen where 
he could wash off the mud in which he might have been 
standing for nights, where his clothes could be disinfected, 
and where he could sleep if he had a few hours to wait. In 
short, it was our intention that the soldier should never be 
without anything that could express the appreciation of his 
country and lessen his sacrifice. Unfortunately, however, 
in a war that has to be told in fragments, it was all too easy, 
as will be seen presently, for gaps to appear in the continuity 
of this service. 

*'It is absurd," said a French soldier who had just come 
out of the trenches, ^Ho talk about Red Cross work. It 
has not existed. . . . How could it ? A few litter carriers 
went with us on some of our expeditions but they were soon 
shot down. ..." 

For the wounded the Army Medical Corps provided the 
best and quickest care. Alacrity in this department was 
the essence of effectiveness. An hour might have meant the 
difference between life and death. That hour was saved by 
mounting on wheels everything conceivable so that the 
wounded might be met at the nearest possible point. The 



134 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

Red Cross contributed ambulances with operating equip- 
ments, dental operating rooms, ophthalmological ambu- 
lances, plants to make ice to pack head wounds, heating 
plants, and disinfecting plants. In the American Medical 
service there was surgical skill that is not surpassed in the 
world ; and to supplement the medical work the Red Cross, 
with Army cooperation, maintained a research bureau, the 
value of which has been recognized by all medical authorities. 
For operations there was a plant manufacturing nitrous 
oxide gas which, otherwise, could only be obtained in France 
after long delay. There were shops to manufacture artificial 
limbs; there was a department — the Communication 
Bureau — which searched for the missing man and gave his 
family news concerning him and which, like the Home 
Service in the home camps, straightened out a thousand 
tangles and did a multitude of things that were seldom 
twice alike. 

All the permanent or semi-permanent Red Cross plants 
in France, — following the practice of the Army, — were 
built and equipped for future requirements. The French 
onlookers had a thought in reserve when they saw the prep- 
arations that were being made for debarkation of the 
American armies — the unconscionably huge buildings, the 
ponderous railroad equipment and hundreds of miles of 
rails; they looked dubiously, too, at the preparations of 
the Red Cross and wondered if the finished fabrics of ac- 
complishment would ever fit their vast foundations. But 
within eighteen months they saw two million soldiers walk 
off these same docks and move forward promptly to business 
over the iron pathways; they saw incalculable stores of 
everything under the sun following in uninterrupted proces- 
sion, food and raiment, engineering supplies and building 
material, and all the paraphernalia of war. 

A well-known Liberty Loan speaker upon returning from 
France, referring to the big line of stations, said : — 



ON THE BATTLEFRONT 135 

' "I didn't know what a canteen was like. I didn't know whether you 
rolled it or kept it back in the kitchen somewhere ; but here is what it's 
like : if you took one of those piers in the North River that you tie a big 
steamship up to and converted it into a business enterprise to rest and 
feed and sleep and wash people, that is about the size of the proposition. 
The kitchen came first — a huge room full of caldrons and chopping 
blocks and meats and things — and next was a lunch-counter affair with 
some tables where they could probably feed five hundred at a clip. Next 
was the living room where the soldiers could throw off the accouterments 
of war and rest themselves and write letters. Outside they had some 
very pretty gardens which had been decorated by the camouflage artists 
of France. Next came a large theater, — mostly moving pictures, — I 
was told, but occasionally the men got up entertainments of their own. 
Next came a place where I suppose 2500 men could sleep, and they had 
baths and ways to make their clothes sanitary and things of that kind, 
all very essential. 

"The women workers in this same outfit are entitled to some kind of a 
memorial, if it is nothing more than in our hearts and minds. They are 
doing a wonderful work. There is a group of women over here taking 
care of about seven or eight thousand soldiers every day. It is at a rail- 
road center where they transfer off the trains and are redistributed. 
That thing is done twenty-four hours a day in three shifts of eight hours." 

The American soldier interpreted ''Rest Station'' — 
with its subtle and more or less elusive course dietary of 
the French — as something more or less like home and 
the good old dishes of childhood. Home, therefore, became 
the keynote in all the buildings and furnishings of the Red 
Cross way-stations on the road to war. There was the home 
flavor in the seasoning of the food, and a home atmosphere 
in the chintzes and various commodities at hand, such as 
soap, towels, reading matter, and phonograph records. The 
faciUties which the Rest Stations afforded for writing 
letters back home made the censor of one section, who had 
to handle them, old before his time, and brought forth a 
plaintive, if humerous, protest against the stimulation of 
correspondence. 

It was not easy work that these women did. As a matter 
of truth it involved the hardest kind of physical labor. 



136 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

Moreover, they were accomplishing unconsciously, perhaps, 
what even they did not realize at the time — the keeping 
uppermost in his mind the home idea of women. 

Thus, until the day came when the trains of wounded 
began rolling back to the coast, the soldier's journey was not 
such a bad journey, after all. And when he got within sound 
of the trouble he was clean and fit. That was what the Red 
Cross aimed to make him. 

The war has brought to light many heroic deeds. How- 
ever, not all heroes were men : there are girls who went out 
in all humility to lend what help they could in the service 
of the Red Cross canteens and who came home with the 
Croix de Guerre; there are girls who stayed at their posts 
of duty in the canteens while the soldiers were at the front 
and when the windows of their huts cracked from shellfire, 
and the roof fell in pieces — stayed through nights of tumult 
and danger where their lives were worth scarce a penny 
whistle ; and, again, when on the jammed roadways in the 
great advance, where the crowding thousands of troops 
were choked and stayed by ambulances and trucks with their 
hundreds of wounded, these Red Cross girls were there to 
help dislodge the tangle so that the great currents could 
flow normally on their way. This, surely, was getting into 
the road and makeshift of war. 

"We feed 4000 or 5000 soldiers a day, and our canteen is never closed," 
wrote a Red Cross canteen girl. "All of our boys on this line of communi- 
cation stop and rest and have meals and refreshments. After every battle 
and at intervals we see them coming back. Over 1500 came in lately and 
practically none had ever had first-aid service. Blood-soaked, weary, but 
oh, how brave ! With shell-wounds and bayonet-wounds, they will tell 
you quickly, *I can wait, look after Jim, here."' 

It was a long hard grind with existence always in the 
balance and with no rest or change other than the precipitate 
retreat or advance as ground was lost or gained. The 
pictures did not vary except in minor details and in intensity. 



ON THE BATTLEFRONT 137 

The canteens were located in all sorts of places,— any shelter, 
almost, that would keep out the rain, served the purpose,— 
but the vital creature comforts were there. The worn, mud- 
marked, often bloody faces of war-weary men swarmed in 
out of the night. There was no Hght save candles or a 
guttering lamp. They did not eat, — they fed, gulping 
the hot coffee, munching ravenously. They were spent, 
but the urge and rush of battle was still on them. The 
great gims punctuated the talk and the clatter ; there was 
the sibilant half-moaning whistle of the German shells and 
the muffled roar of their breaking; one had the sense of 
being depersonalized, or the dual feehng that comes of 
hasheesh. And yet, for all its awful reality and nearness, it 
seemed like a dream. The last exchanging columns having 
passed away into the night the canteeners slept — these 
men of varying age and calling who, with gray in their 
hair but with youth's dreams still weaving in their hearts, 
were keeping Mercy's outposts on the borderland of doom. 
And the evening and the morning were another day with a 
flight to the cellar when an air-raid began or when the 
rangefinder picked up the Httle area where the canteen 

was situated. 

In times of violent action, when the lines changed under 
the weight of new forces, the mobihty of these Red Cross 
formations was invaluable. In the broken chronicles of the 
great German drive in 1918, there were thriUing stories of 
the quick shifts made by hospital and canteen workers : a 
sudden gathering of food and equipment, of medicines and 
instruments, and that heaviest of all known impedimenta, the 
wounded men under treatment ; a swiftly executed move 
rearward, trucks loaded with gear and personnel and 
wounded, but never farther than was absolutely necessary ; 
the estabhshment of new quarters and the quick resumption 
of work, for men's Hves spelled victory and delay was death. 

The narrative of Compiegne, where 100,000 men a day 



138 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

poured forward and back as through a narrow gateway, is a 
moving picture. It started on the morrow of the great 
German attacks of March, 1918, when French Grand Head- 
quarters had been moved away to Tevhs and the civihan 
population had fled; away back in the days when Lloyd 
George was cabling President Wilson to send men — and 
send them quick; away back before the main American 
Armies came. In a big hotel, long abandoned, the Red 
Cross took lodgment, threw open the doors and never closed 
them for two weeks, intent on its work of general relief. It 
was indeed a world cast from its moorings ! Soldiers were 
lost, — separated from their commands, — f oodless, shelter- 
less, cold, and wet ; and the streets held crowds of refugees. 
There were doctors and nurses, executives and handy men of 
every nationality and every faith, who gathered in this 
center and joined in its work. The kitchen held steaming 
stew-pots which were never empty. On the floors of the 
great reception-room and ball-room, soldiers of all armies 
slept side by side. The city's stores were opened and dry 
food given away to the crowding refugees. The truck 
drivers, with aerial bombs falling all around them, gathered 
terror-stricken people from their houses and making their 
way over bridges that were under vicious fire hauled them 
away to safety. In the railroad stations an improvised 
infirmary was established where doctors dressed the wounds 
of fifty to a hundred soldiers a day — wounds that had been 
inflicted two days before. 

In the hospital at Annel, six miles from Compiegne, in an 
old chateau, were two American doctors who had stayed on 
the night of March 25, 1917, after seeing the wounded carried 
away by canal boats. The artillery near at hand thundered 
on with scarcely a pause. It was a night when the Germans 
were hammering at Noyon and threatening to break through 
any hour and start down the main road to Paris. But the 
American ambulance drivers, from force of habit, kept 



ON THE BATTLEFRONT 139 

coming with loads of wounded. The American doctors 
stayed on and worked over the tables for two days or more. 
Five Red Cross trucks arrived with supplies and their drivers 
administered anaesthetics while these two American doctors 
operated on poilus, Tommies, or whoever came along. 

Some canteen women came in from Compiegne, and with 
the big German planes soaring overhead and the grumble of 
the battle drowning speech, these two lion-hearted Americans 
remained at their posts. This was the sort of courage and 
the sort of faith that carried the American wherever his 
job lay in the hurly-burly of war. 

After the fighting became open — after the second battle 
of the Marne and after the Germans started moving toward 
the Rhine — the rolling canteen proved the prime solution 
of the quick-lunch question. 

In the zone of war the Red Cross workers did not think 
of safety beyond the sane precautions of the soldier. The 
Red Cross man offered his life as a gift to his country and 
to the cause of humanity. 

The picture of the ambulance drivers and their venturous 
task has become more or less familiar. Their peril was in- 
cessant. On the other hand, considering their numbers, 
the forbearance with which death passed by their charmed 
ranks since the day the first American units went over in 
1914, has been a wonderment of the war. Trying as these 
young ambulanciers did to get the wounded from the most 
forward point possible, they carried their cars through raining 
shells and bombs, through gas, through every menace that 
the fire zone knew. In and out, journey after journey, 
waiting the summons always by night as well as by day, 
there is a long record of their courage and their ungrudging 
devotion to one of the most trying duties of the war. 

This letter from a Red Cross ambulance driver at Verdun, 
in the awful summer of 1916, merits preservation as a picture 
grimly faithful of the scenes in which these non-combatant 



140 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

heroes played their part, and a pathetic record as the agony 
by which France made good the promise, ''lis ne passeront 
pasJ^ (They shall not pass.) 

My Dear : 

To-night I am sitting in a small underground cellar of one of the public 
buUdings of the town, acting as a sort of time-keeper or starter for the 
cars going up to our most dangerous post and handling the reserve cars 
for wounded in the town itself. I wish I could describe the scene as it is 
before my eyes, — for the whole world is passing here — French, Ameri- 
can, living, wounded, and dying. 

A long heavily arched corridor, with stone steps leading down to us ; 
two compartments off to one side lined with wine-bins, where our reserve 
men and a few French brancardiers (stretcher-bearers) are lying on their 
stained stretchers, some snoring ; beyond a door that leads into a small 
operating room, and to the left another door that leads to a little sick 
ward, the most pathetic little room I have ever seen — with four beds 
of different sizes and kinds on one side and six on the other, taken evi- 
dently from the ruined houses near by — and one tired infirmier (hospital 
attendant) to tend and soothe the wounded and dying. 

In the bed nearest the door, a French priest, shot through the lungs — 
with pneumonia setting in — his black beard pointed straight up, and 
whispering for water. Next to him, a little German lad, hardly nineteen 
and small, with about six hours to live, calling, sometimes screaming, for 
his mother, and then for water. Next to him a French captain of infantry 
with his arm off at the shoulder and his head wounded, weak, dying, but 
smihng; and next to him a tirailleur in delirium calling on his Colonel 
to charge the Germans. The infirmier is going from one to the other, 
soothing and waiting on each in turn. He asks what the German is say- 
ing, and I tell him he is calling for his mother. "Ah, this is a sad war," 
he says, as he goes over to hold the poor lad's hand. 

A brancardier comes in with a telephone message, — "A blesse'* 
(wounded man) at Belleville — "very serious." This is a reserve car 
call, so one sKdes out and is gone like a gray ghost down the ruined street, 
making all the speed its driver can — no easy matter — with no lights. 
In twenty minutes he is back. The brancardiers go out — they come in 
again bearing the wounded man on a stretcher and place it on the floor 
beside the Httle stove. One of them, who is a priest, leans over him and 
asks his name and town ; then in answer to what his wife's name is, he 
murmurs : "Alice" ; while on the other side another brancardier is slitting 
the clothes from his body and I shiver at the pity of it, the sight I saw. 



ON THE BATTLEFRONT 141 

The surgeon comes out of his little operating room. Weary with the 
night's tragic work — after so many, many other tragic nights, he douses 
his head in a bucket of water. Then he turned to the wounded man. 
He looked long at him, gently felt his nose and Kfted his closed eyelids. 
Then, at his nod, the stretcher is again lifted and the wounded man carried 
into the operating room, and soon after into the little room of sorrows. 

In answer to my eager question the surgeon shook his head. Not a 
chance. 

A brancardier and I gathered the soldier's belongings from his clothes 
to be sent to his wife, but even we had to stop a few minutes after we saw 
the photograph of his wife and their two little children. 

An hour later, as our night's work was slacking down and several cars 
had driven up and been unloaded, the infirmier came in from the little 
room and said something to the brancardiers. Two of them got a stretcher 
and in a moment 'Hhe blesse from Belle ville" came past with a sheet over 
him. They laid him down at the other end of the room and another 
brancardier commenced roUing and tying him in a burlap for burial. As 
you looked he changed to shapeless log. Then out to the dead wagon 
with it. 

Soon after I went into the little ward again to see how the others were 
coming through the night, and was glad to see them all quieted down; 
even the little German seemed less in pain, though his breathing still 
shook the little bed he lay on. 

Through a chink I saw that day was beginning to break, and as I 
noticed it I heard the Chief's car coming in from the "Sap" and I knew 
the night's work was over. 

In France after the American Army began going over in 
volume, the ambulance service, in common with that of the 
hospitals and early work with the wounded generally, was 
militarized almost as completely as the fighting forces them- 
selves. Many of the ambulance sections which, previously, 
had been allied with the Red Cross, were absorbed into the 
Army in the same manner as the nurses and base hospitals : 
In all, the Red Cross organized forty-seven ambulance units 
which operated under Army management and as parts of 
the Medical Corps of the Expeditionary Force; it main- 
tained its ambulance units in the nature of reserves, en- 
gaged in transporting wounded men, who were on the way 



142 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

to recovery, from base hospitals to the convalescent establish- 
ments maintained by the Red Cross in all parts of France ; 
it also maintained service for the Marine Hospital at the 
port of debarkation. 

The line of demarcation established in General Pershing's 
forces between the Red Cross ambulance service and the 
units definitely identified with the Army itself had a measur- 
able degree of elasticity, which made all Red Cross force 
and equipment available for the service in advanced territory 
in case of need. At the Chateau-Thierry fight when the 
flood of wounded was overtaxing the space and the Army 
machinery for their removal after treatment, Red Cross 
ambulances were called into service, carrying their unhappy 
burden of injured straight from the front to Paris. 

This official relation of the Red Cross to the Army — a 
supplementary and coadjutant one — was through the 
whole field of military activity, whether in the supply of 
materials or of service. In a sense, it is for this purpose 
that the people of the United States maintain the Red 
Cross as a quasi-government institution and for this ultimate 
purpose that it was nationalized. 

In the average mind, confused in contemplation of the 
war's swiftly moving picture, it is doubtful if there exists 
any clearly defined idea of the perfectly regulated system 
by which the Army effected immediate removal of its 
casualties, and the continuous and progressive treatment of 
their injuries while, at the same time, relieving any con- 
gestion that hampered the steady back-flow of wounded 
from the fighting lines. 

Under the Army system there were in hospital service 
three parallel zones — somewhat roughly defined, and vary- 
ing with conditions — in which it was intended that all the 
elements involved shall be of the Army service and not 
voluntary. In a mobile Army each division had four com- 
panies, each company twelve ambulances, with dressing 



ON THE BATTLEFRONT |143 

station equipment. These stations were set up in some 
sheltered place, if such could be found, and to them the 
wounded were brought. They were provided with a certain 
amount of equipment, food, and supplies, such as could be 
easily carried and would suffice for initial treatment of 
injuries. Back of these — marking the second zone — were 
four field hospitals under canvas, each capable of caring for 
216 patients. There were beds but no cots. These stations 
carried operating equipment and adequate kitchen outfits. 
At the next stage — the head of the line of communication 
— was the first evacuation hospital. The capacity here 
was double? that of the field hospitals, since the transportation 
facilities farther up might in time of intense action be over- 
taxed. This was a more or less permanent station, usually 
located in some suitable existing building. It was not mobile 
in the sense that it had no transportation equipment. The 
wounded were dispatched by ambulance or by hospital 
trains. It was equivalent to what in the British Army was 
known as the Casualty Clearing Station and was, usually, 
located in the nearest town. Its function was to clear the 
field hospital for future emergencies and was permanent 
save in cases of retreat. If an advance was made, a new 
evacuation station would be set up in the acquired ground, 
thus shortening the distance from the mobile area. 

From this point the patient, when in fit condition, was 
removed to the base hospital. Back of this lay the so- 
called ''home zone." From the base, progress was to the 
convalescent hospitals in Paris or other parts of France, 
some of which were maintained by the Red Cross. 

This, in short, was the process by which the soldier caught 
up in the instant of his injiiry, or as soon after as possible, 
was passed along on the way to his recovery with progressive 
medical and surgical treatment. Outwardly, and in its 
operation and control, it was exclusively an Army organi- 
zation, but the function of the Red Cross, other than in 



144 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

crises where the system was overloaded and the Army service 
needed reenforcement, was still an important one. The 
largest single appropriation of the Red Cross for the United 
States Army in 1917-1918 was $4,330,760, for what is 
known as ravitaillement service. Under this title the Red 
Cross fm-nished all sorts of things contributory to the proper 
and convenient care of the wounded, to the end not only of 
humanity but of military effectiveness. It included port- 
able kitchens, heating and lighting plants, laundries, baths 
and disinfecting outfits, dental ambulances, and material 
for what are called mobile complementary hospitals; also 
it furnished huts, barracks, and miscellaneous supplies for 
the purpose of facilitating restorative work among the 
wounded and maintaining such work in the advanced terri- 
tory at the points of greater availability. Under the advice 
of Army Medical authorities the Red Cross established two 
plants, one in France and one in America, for the manufac- 
ture of nitrous oxide gas for the purpose of anaesthesia 
in cases where the patient was in too critical a state for 
ether. The total normal capacity was over 25,000 gallons 
a day. 

The hospital supply service, to both American and French 
hospitals — and the latter are nearly 4000 in number — 
was very wide. It was operated by having agents call at 
the various hospitals and obtain from them lists of needed 
articles not regularly supplied by the Army, such as special 
surgical instruments and apparatus, convalescent garments, 
bandages and slings for special operations. These were 
delivered from the Hospital Supply Service. There was a 
diet-kitchen service maintained to supply invalid foods for 
wounded men. Large stores of these foodstuffs were held in 
Red Cross warehouses, subject to requisition by the Army. 
These, in a way, were emergency contributions to the 
wounded man's welfare. The organization of base hospitals, 
of which the Red Cross furnished fifty to the Army Medical 



I 



# 



" ON THE BATTLEFRONT 145 

Service, at a cost of over $2,000,000, was most fundamental 
in its character and value. 

The Marne fighting of July afforded striking illustration 
of the importance of the Red Cross supply system in supple- 
menting the work of the Army hospitals. In one shipment 
seven tons of surgical dressings and five tons of diet foods 
were dispatched to the front for use in evacuation hospitals 
for American wounded. The Red Cross medical officer's 
storehouses and pharmacies were open and busy day and 
night throughout the counter offensive. On July 18 the 
chief of the medical section arrived from the front and 
started back at three o'clock the following morning with 
a load of emergency supplies, including fifty gallons of 
alcohol; 2000 doses of tetanus antitoxin; surgical instru- 
ments ; several gross of surgical needles ; and dressings and 
operating material of all kinds. There are no speed laws 
in war, and the means that are quickest and nearest at 
hand were taken for every service. Drugs or hospital 
equipment needed in a hiu'ry have been rushed to the front 
by motorcycle. There is a record in Paris of the establish- 
ment and preparation of evacuation hospitals behind the 
front, which makes all previous performances look painfully 
slow. A hospital officer left Paris with ten nurses and ten 
tons of equipment. They found a desirable building, rented 
it, equipped it with everything needed, including operating 
room and X-ray outfit, and were receiving patients within 
three days. 

Thus through every phase and department of hospital 
work the Red Cross sought in greater or lesser degree, as 
opportunity served, to upbuild and maintain the most 
effective and most modern service for the healing and restora- 
tion of the wounded man. The millions of dollars of popular 
subscriptions that were placed at its disposal have not only 
worked in every possible direction to insure his comfort, 
but the Army's shoulders were lightened of a time-consuming 



146 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

load and the paramount business of saving lives has been 
sped. 

The war signalized more than one triumph which was not 
of arms. One of the most conspicuous of these was the 
conquest that medical and surgical science achieved over 
scourges which devoured man power in the armies of the 
past. In July, 1918, the Red Cross mobilized in this country 
a six months' supply of the bacillus Welchi serum for the 
cure and prevention of gas gangrene, amounting in all to 
120,000 doses. Tetanus had been mastered, but the deci- 
mation of forces by the cruel agency of poison-gas was not 
overcome until by exhaustive research the immune serum 
was discovered. The Red Cross assumed responsibility 
for dispensation of it to the Allied armies. The providing 
of splints, of the six types now developed for confinement 
of injured members in cases of fracture, became another 
large-scale activity of the Red Cross. The boys of the 
Junior organization acquired high proficiency in their manu- 
facture and produced them in volume. The Red Cross 
also maintained five factories for the purpose in Paris, with 
a total output of 16,000 splints each month. 

At the American base hospitals the Red Cross installed 
various forms of diversion, which shortened the weary 
journey of the soldier back to health. A little garden enter- 
prise was started at one of the bases which proved of such 
benefit that the Red Cross sent to America for men and 
equipment to extend the work to all the base hospitals. 
These little farms proved a perfect medicine for the " shell- 
shocked '' men, and furnished tons of vegetables toward the 
food supply of the institutions. 

In 1917, the Red Cross had provided funds for a Yule 
party and entertainment in every base hospital, and a 
Christmas tree in every ward where a soldier or sailor lay. 
There were 1,750,000 Christmas cheer packages distributed 
at home and abroad, which cost approximately one dollar 



ON THE BATTLEFRONT 147 

each, and which contained socks, handkerchiefs, tobacco, 
chewing gum, cigarettes, and other useful things. In 
1918, the Red Cross, complying with the Army rule that 
permitted each soldier to receive only one package of speci- 
fied dimensions, supplied the cartons and distributed them. 
Just to make sure that each soldier received one it prepared 
and filled several thousands of these packages for those who 
might be overlooked. 

During the war the Red Cross furnished each wounded 
man — who in the stress of the battle lost all his belongings 
— with a comfort bag that contained toilet articles, razors, 
handkerchiefs, and many other necessities. These were 
especially appreciated by the soldiers. A toothbrush was 
often the first thing a wounded doughboy would ask for on 
arrival at the hospital. 

'^ These things, '^ said General Pershing, '^ bring the soldier 
to remember that the people at home are behind him. You 
do not know how much they mean to the soldier who is over 
here carrying the flag for his country.'^ 

With a view to centralizing the activities of relief organi- 
zations overseas, and to facilitate the work with the Army, 
General Pershing designated the Red Cross as the only 
relief society to work in locating and administering to Amer- 
ican wounded who had been removed to hospitals in France. 
There were 4500 hospitals. To simplify the task it was 
conducted on a zone system and wounded Americans con- 
valescing in France were enlisted to carry it on. 

The work of giving information regarding soldiers to 
their relatives was organized under the Bureau of Home 
Communication. Primarily, this work consisted in gather- 
ing full and detailed information as to casualties and for 
this piu-pose ^^ searchers,'' both men and women, were sent 
to France, their numbers increasing with the numbers of 
overseas troops. It was the duty of the War Department 
to give notices of casualties to famihes, but these notices 



148 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

were necessarily laconic and businesslike. No War Office 
in the world could be asked, in the multipHcity of its duties, 
to write famihes detailed reports, but there was need of 
just this thing. Families sending their boys overseas could 
not understand why, when their son was wounded, he should 
not come home immediately or why the mother should not 
go out to nurse him. Here was a new opportunity for the 
Red Cross to be of service. It placed women in the hospitals 
abroad to write letters or reports about the young men who 
were ill or wounded or dying, and these were transmitted 
by the Bureau of Communication in Washington to the 
families. Sometimes these women were overwhelmed with 
work, as, for example, in some of the evacuation hospitals 
where the wounded passed through in a steady stream. 
They could not report on all the cases, but they tried to re- 
port on the more serious cases and to write to the families 
a personal letter about those who had died. With the divi- 
sions near the front there were men searchers. Their busi- 
ness was, in the first place, to answer the inquiries forwarded 
from America concerning men who had not been heard from 
or who had troubles which might be assisted by word from 
home. Sometimes they, too, reported on casualties without 
any request. Such a case as the following occurred very 
often : in the Chateau-Thierry drive the wounded men were 
poured into a hospital, the most seriously wounded to be 
treated, the others to be sent on. The searcher had to give 
most of his time to assist the stretcher-bearers and the sur- 
geons. He still had time, however, to lie on the ground 
beside some seriously wounded man and to jot down the last 
message he wanted sent to his family. It was impossible 
that a searcher, under circumstances of this kind, could talk 
with all of the wounded or even a large proportion of them, 
but the few who were seen made the whole work worth while 
in that it brought one ray of comfort to a few bereaved 
families. 



ON THE BATTLEFRONT 149 

All the information collected abroad was sent to the Paris 
office where it was classified and forwarded to the Washington 
office. The httle group of letter writers was rapidly aug- 
mented and it was always the plan to send the famiUes 
letters which gave the facts as completely and as kindly 
as possible. There was also kept a card file of all casu- 
alties, which file finally grew to contain some 400,000 
cards giving, so far as possible, on each card the history of 
the case. The Army was thoroughly cooperative in that it 
reahzed the need and understood that the Red Cross could 
be of service not only to the famihes but to the miUtary 
authorities. The files at the Central Records Office were 
always open to the Red Cross workers stationed there and 
much of the information received outside was checked by 
the official reports. The only work under the general super- 
vision of the Bureau of Communication which did not 
actually go through the Washington office was that of 
keeping famihes informed concerning men sick in the camps 
and cantonments in this country. Here, also, men were 
placed to send out the so much needed information and 
probably many thousands of letters went daily to famihes 
from these camps and cantonments in addition to the thou- 
sands concerning the troops overseas which went out from 
the Washington office. 

But to return to the work abroad : particular attention 
was given to all cases of missing men or prisoners. In 
addition to its search work the Bureau received through 
the International Committee at Berne, Switzerland, a list of 
American prisoners in Germany, officially provided by the 
German government. After announcement to the relatives, 
the prisoner's case was transferred to the Bureau of Pris- 
oners' Rehef. The Red Cross supphed to each prisoner, 
for account of the given unit, twenty pounds of food. As a 
matter of record, there was return receipt card for proof 
that this food was delivered. 



150 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

And SO to the last possible notch the Red Cross followed 
the way of the soldier. If he was wounded and came round 
fit and went back, as he was always restless and eager to do, 
well and good. His family knew it and he didn't go back 
hungry or in need. If his injuries unfitted him for further 
service and he was sent home, then Red Cross men or women 
met him at the home port and stayed at his side until he 
reached the hospital to which he had been assigned. And, 
finally, there remains the one last service — the saddest of 
all : it was to watch over the brave souls who had given all 
for their country and for humanity ; to stand by them to the 
brink ; and to soften, in whatever way possible, the sorrow 
of those who mourned.^ If there be any service in the world 
that is nobler, more faithful, or more inspired by love than 
this, I do not know of it. 

1 Through the Department of Communication the Red Cross has a 
corps of photographers, working, under the Graves Registration Service 
in France, whose task it is to take photographs of all identified graves 
and these, as soon as received, will be sent by the Red Cross to the families 
of the dead. 



CHAPTER XII 

"backing up the FRENCH '' 

The American Red Cross in France — First Request — Pioneer Work to 
Find Families and Keep Them Together — Belgians in France — 
Cooperation with the French Government — Cooperative Union 
with English and American Society of Friends — Cooperation with 
Other Relief Organizations — Dispensaries — Purchasing in France — 
Warehouses Secured — Assistance to the French Army — Ac- 
knowledgment to the French Government and French Officials. 

ONE of the first things I was told when I arrived at our 
headquarters in Paris was that the French people had 
said that the American Red Cross came to France so silently 
that they did not know it had come. It was a particularly 
graceful way, wholly French in its subtlety, of paying a 
compliment to the newly arrived Commission and, needless 
to say, was much to the liking of men almost overwhelmed 
with the magnitude and strangeness of their mission. For, 
although men may have gone on greater missions, — and 
even that is doubtful, — surely none could have been 
stranger than that which left the United States in June, 1917, 
— two months after the declaration of war, — with only 
the vaguest idea of what they would be able to do in the way 
of all kinds of relief. Nor was the full meaning of their 
undertaking revealed to them until they touched French 
soil and had become eye-witnesses of the great havoc caused 
by three years of vahant wrestling with the huge and, at 
times, all but overwhelming labor of maintaining an un- 
broken front against the invader. 

That the ranks of soldiery had been terribly depleted, 

151 



152 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

there were signs on every hand ; nor were there evidences 
lacking of the acute suffering among the civiHan population, 
where whole families found themselves separated : fathers 
were in the trenches, mothers worked in the munition fac- 
tories, while the children were adrift in a world of disorder ; 
in short, there was not a man, woman, or child that was not a 
vital factor in the situation ! 

The crying need, therefore, was not only to keep up the 
morale of the soldier but also to build up and maintain the 
spirit of the people behind the line, — something which 
could not alone be accomplished by the first handful of Amer- 
ican soldiers that went over to take the assurance to the 
mihtary authorities that America was in the war. Early, 
it had been demonstrated that weeks and months must, 
necessarily, elapse before the American Army could find her 
place on the battlefield. So it was not mere soldiery that 
would serve to hearten the French people, but something 
that would tell them that the soul of America was, and would 
be, with them in all their multifarious needs, to the depth 
of her universal strength and the length of her great resources. 

From a purely practical viewpoint it was argued that 
every particle of strength and confidence which America 
could give to the French people, would be a real contribution 
not only towards relief but towards shortening the war. 
Furthermore, that all care for her sick and wounded and all 
relief for her destitute people would tend to reduce the num- 
ber of killed and wounded among Americans in France. 
So, from the utilitarian as well as from the humanitarian 
side, the work of the Red Cross in France, in those early days, 
was altogether worth while. 

With the American passion for reducing every project to a 
business formula, the Commission built in advance on the 
old Red Cross basis of military and civilian relief, thinking 
that the work would readily divide and subdivide itself un- 
der these heads for purposes of organization and develop- 



"BACKING UP THE FRENCH" 153 

ment ; but its calculation went for naught. What it did was 
to begin relief first and work out the organization afterward. 

It took counsel with the men who were controlHng the 
soldiery of France. General Petain went down the hues and 
put it up to his poilus: ^'What is wanted more — care for 
yourselves or your famihes?'' To a man, they answered: 
^'Forget us — look after our famihes." 

Before the Commission had been in France a fortnight 
it cabled a request for food, clothing, hospital supplies, and 
lumber to help the refugees and begin relief in the devastated 
regions in the north of France — that long strip of country 
from which the Germans had been driven out and which 
they had left shattered, polluted, and stripped of every- 
thing that might be of beauty or of use. 

On July 12, the War Council set aside $1,000,000 for 
the relief of sick and wounded French soldiers. And 
when, on July 16, word came by cable of the immediate 
need of doctors and nurses, especially those expert in the 
treatment of children's diseases, the War Council engaged 
at once the foremost pediatrist of the country who, with a 
staff of child specialists and a corps of nurses, took ship for 
the other side where he and others established a most ex- 
traordinary series of homes. 

So they began with the children, — the most pitiful as 
well as the most numerous refugees, — and at Toul estab- 
lished a refuge for them, one of many that has been set up 
between that day and this. Toward the end of 1917, there 
were at Nesle a thousand little broken down Belgian children 
under treatment, while preparations were being made for 
taking in other thousands to be cleaned and braced up and 
placed somewhere in comfortable homes. From this, the 
natural advance was to the refugees of larger growth. Work 
was started in Paris, where the congestion was most acute, 
and carried out into other cities and towns of the devastated 
departments. 



154 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

For the refugees, as for everybody else, the work was 
done in cooperation with the French Government, which 
had a system of its own with which it had been trying vainly 
to stem the tide. It consisted of a Department Committee 
in Paris, theoretically with a member from each of the eighty 
odd departments, but actually with only two or three repre- 
sented, who passed on the applications for relief and the 
identification papers of the applicants. The Government 
turned over the task to the American Red Cross, which en- 
larged the organization so that each of the invaded districts, 
whose outcasts thronged the rest of the country, had a com- 
mittee at work. But at best it was hopeless to endeavor to 
meet such a problem with the bureau. There were only 
phantom meals to give away, the supply of clothing was not 
a fraction of what was needed — for these people had been 
practically blasted out of their homes and had hurried to 
the highway with German shells bursting behind them. 
With distress and tragedy written in their faces and their 
souls, they headed for the centers with the love that misery 
has for company, and Paris was the Mecca of the great pil- 
grimage. The result was inevitable. There were families 
of six, seven, and eight herded in one room, and thousands 
that had no roof over them at all save as the chance of a 
night might offer. By converting great public buildings 
and unused structures of every sort into ^^ apartment houses, '^ 
by supplying stoves and furniture and other requisites, the 
American Red Cross set out to move twenty-five thousand 
families into comfortable quarters before the advent of cold 
weather. 

In handling this multitude of the homeless the Red Cross 
did not have normal people to deal with. The adults, Hke the 
children, were worn to the bone by their vicissitudes, broken 
in strength, in nerves, and almost in hope. A great part of 
them were ill, some shattered in mind, while the tubercular 
were an army in themselves. It was not alone the misery 



"BACKING UP THE FRENCH" 155 

of these last that called for abatement : it was the menace 
they presented to the future of France. The Red Cross 
took over, by courtesy of the French Government, and also 
in some instances from private organizations, already es- 
tablished hospitals which, for lack of funds or of forces, were 
unable to maintain maximum operation ; it completed half- 
finished buildings, refurnished abandoned barracks, papered, 
painted, and put in glass solaria and partitions to make pri- 
vate rooms for those victims who were near the end of the 
struggle ; it singled out from the battalions of the homeless 
and exhausted many upon whom the '^ white death ^^ had set 
its mark, and even those whose physical depletion might ren- 
der them easy victims; it established for such, both old 
and young, preventoria, where by careful treatment and 
nourishment the doom might be turned aside. 

Health, — health and strength were the things needed, 
not only for the fighting which was to come but for the peace 
which was to follow the fighting. France, with her decline 
in birth rate, representing a huge net annual loss, with her 
sacrifice in war, with the future all black before her, could not 
neglect any means of saving fife if she was to remain a nation 
and enjoy the freedom she had worked for so valiantly. 
And, with the back-breaking burden of the war's expense 
still piHng up, to permit this increasing multitude to settle 
down as absolute dependents, inactive and unproductive 
and consuming the food of idleness, spelled ruin so plain that 
the blind might read. Gradually the solution of these com- 
posite puzzles began to outline itself. Taking the cue from 
the French Government, whose efforts had all been directed 
toward the return of the refugees to their provinces, so far 
as the conditions might permit, and avaihng itself of the con- 
suming love of home which is ingrown in the nature of the 
French race, the Red Cross combined its efforts for the care 
of the refugees with a broad and carefully evolved plan to 
start them on the way to self -maintenance. To this coherent 



156 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

purpose it added provision for the maintenance of health 
and sanitation, and the instruction of its new wards in the 
ways of hygienic hving. 

Little by little the situation began to unfold and the way 
of progress to reveal itself. The work gathered speed 
and volume. The machine, now increasing its scope and 
strength, began to register. Every ship that passed the 
German sharks brought new additions to the Red Cross 
forces, both men and women ; and every day saw fresh 
details of them moving out to some new field, pioneers of 
pity, soldiers of the new creed. 

The refugees from the farming country were keenest 
of all to go back to the home acres. And the French com- 
mittees, by way of stimulating this tendency, withdrew a 
moiety of their assistance and promised to refund, after the 
War, whatever the land tillers would expend for their own 
rehabilitation. So the stream began to move northward into 
the territory the Germans had left. On ahead of them, at 
their side and behind them, moved the columns of the Red 
Cross, ready with food, with lumber, and other materials 
for reconstruction, with seeds and tools for the restoration 
of the land, with labor provided by a cooperative union with 
the English and American societies of Friends, who had done 
heroic work from the beginning of the War. There are long 
records in the Red Cross archives in France showing in de- 
tail what roof was replaced upon this farmer's barn, what 
glass put in the windows of another's farmstead, and end- 
less other repairs to fit the places for human habitation and 
rural industry. There was an amazing shipment of pumps, 
for it is well to remember that what the German apostle of 
Kultur could not carry away he smashed and what he could 
not smash he fouled. 

Like homing birds, these French farmers settled down 
among the ruins to resume the tenor of their placid lives. 
The like of it could not happen elsewhere in the world! 



"BACKING UP THE FRENCH" 157 

The Red Cross was with them, ready to lend a hand at any- 
thing they needed; it showed them short cuts in agricul- 
ture and rebuilding ; it taught the lessons of modern sanita- 
tion. It established dispensaries, with doctors and nurses 
and facilities for transit, and the sections mapped off with 
medical routes after the fashion of Rural Free Delivery. 

All up and down the districts established behind the lines, 
away to the valleys and sloping mountains of the Vosges, 
the Red Cross set up dispensaries to do the work of the vil- 
lage doctors who had gone away to war. There was scarcely 
a community in France that had not suffered in health, 
and for the good of all concerned, particularly of the Ameri- 
can Army that was to come, it was imperative they should 
have the ounce of prevention. In fair and foul weather 
these American doctors and their assistants traveled the roads 
of France, visiting the villages and holding office hours in 
some public building or going from house to house where 
more serious sickness existed. There were maladies of all 
sorts, and in some cases incipient epidemics. There were 
children with mumps, measles, and other things; there 
were the aged, weary with years, upon whom the War had 
laid the final straw of pain, and others who never lived to 
see springtime renew the green of their home hillsides. All 
through the winter, staying neither for wind nor weather, 
these Red Cross doctors went toiling over the snow-drifted 
and wind-swept highways of France, ^'practicing medicine'^ 
with an assiduity which was not inspired by hope of gain, 
and helping far more than they knew to win the War. 

Like the agents of empire in far places of the world, these 
"struggling" doctors in the '^ listening posts" of health 
never knew of the great drama of relief which was being en- 
acted elsewhere. By this time in France the people had 
begun to dismiss all doubt and incredulity, and had come 
to the realization as to what the American Red Cross really 
meant. They saw the cloud of miserable refugees dissolving 



158 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

from the city streets. By day and by night the trucks and 
trailers of the Red Cross motor corps roared along the roads 
of France or through the streets of the cities, burdened with 
the material of relief. It was providential that there al- 
ready existed in France so many relief organizations whose 
members were familiar with the field and its difficulties. 
With each of these, when possible, the Red Cross promptly 
struck partnership in the common cause ; and lacking at first 
personnel sufficient to handle the mass of detail, that so 
vast a problem presented, it shared in the burden of their 
work. B'y November, 1917, it was financing and assisting 
seventy-five of them. To the French Red Cross, struggling 
with the awful labor of service to the Armies, the American 
organization gave liberal sums of money for supplies and, 
indeed, furnished upon demand any and all drugs and equip- 
ment of which there was lack. The Civil Affairs Depart- 
ment took over the varied activities of the Tuherculeux de 
la Guerre, established by Mrs. Edith Wharton, of the Secours 
Americain at Amiens, and the American Society for the Re- 
lief of French Orphans. In other cases, such as that of the 
American Hostels for Refugees and the Vestaire VAccueil 
Franco- Americain, the Red Cross assumed financial respon- 
sibility, leaving the administration in the hands of the 
former governing boards. In all, 397 grants of money 
were made in the first six months to 322 institutions, 
whose work had been an immense contribution to the aid 
of suffering France. 

The French, when they came to know us better, coined a 
complimentary name for the American Red Cross which, 
even now, is current: ^^The Godmother of Good Work^.'^ 

But the Godmother of Good Works was an overtaxed 
fairy when it came to the delivery of her benefactions. Time 
was of the very essence of the situation. The lack of every- 
thing was so intense, the Atlantic so wide, the ships so few 
compared with the huge load there was to carry of munitions 



"BACKING UP THE FRENCH" 159 

and inter-Allied supplies, of advance materials for the hous- 
ing of our Armies and the building of the transportation 
system, that the Red Cross Commission accordingly found 
it wiser to buy in France, Spain, and England the many 
thousand-and-one commodities that were instantly required, 
than to wait for the long process of purchase and shipment 
from the United States. It was supplying the French Army 
with hospital apphances and drugs ; to the refugees it was 
furnishing caps and pinafores and other articles of children's 
wear ; to the societies in the devastated region went cloth- 
ing, implements, and even animals ; and to the organiza- 
tions in Paris the multitude of indispensable things for 
making homes. Buying in advance of requirements the 
Red Cross enumerated on its sheets 470 standardized classes 
of articles, many of them with numberless sub-classifications. 
The greater part was stored in Paris, where a dozen ware- 
houses were estabUshed. As the calls came, these things 
were requisitioned and started on their way in the motor 
transport, the formation of which had been begun early in 
the campaign. It will shed some interesting light on 
the scope of these operations to reproduce here the requi- 
sition slips of one day, — thirty-six in all, — which was 
less than the daily average. They represent grants of 4009 
articles sent far and near to nineteen organizations. An 
^'article" may mean anything from a poster to four hundred 
yards of flannel. 

Woolen caps, mittens, coats and capes, scarfs, condensed milk, jam, 
sugared cocoa, meat juice, cheese. 

Tapioca, lemons, checkers, backgammon, croquet, playing cards, face 
towels, kitchen towels, bedside tables, bedcovers, armchairs, chaise longues, 
bowls, candles, candlesticks, undervests, woolen socks, house slippers, 
woolen pajamas, phonograph records. 

Books (Dumas, Verne, Hugo, Daudet, Merimee, Loti, Anatole France). 

Galoshes, blouses, underskirts, stockings, sabots, finger bandages, beans, 
hams, sugar, canned meats, wool, posters, roller toweling, serum, drugs, 
folding beds. 



160 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

Blankets, pillows, sheets, wardrobes, stock pots, saucepans, enamel 
saucepans, small dishes, basins, roasting pans, children's blankets, eider- 
downs, straw mattresses, dust cloths, tea cloths. 

Earthenware, hot water bottles, wash-basins, sterilizers for milk, sheet- 
ing, bath toweling, flannelette, cahco, white flannelette, apron print, gray 
wool for stockings, flannel. 

Soup ladles, tablespoons, butcher knives, peeling knives, kitchen 
knives, chopping knives, large coffee pot, roasting pans, graters, flat pans, 
serving pans, black sateen. 

Girls' drawers, stockings, handkerchiefs, shoes, stove to cook for sixty 
persons. Assorted boxes clothing, nightgowns, shirts, part wool, long 
drawers, girls' bloomers, boys' pants, shirts, girls' dresses, woolen sweaters. 

A diversified business, such as this fragmentary list indi- 
cates, called for sheltering places. Facilities for handling 
and shipment were imperative, and there was always the 
bogie of future growth in volume, which it was now clear 
would be swift and enormous. The warehouse of the Ameri- 
can Rehef Clearing House was soon outgrown, even for exist- 
ing business. Three more of much larger capacity were at 
once secured with railroad connection, and the Red Cross 
cleaned up and installed modern equipment. One establish- 
ment was leased, cleaned, altered, and ready for business in 
forty-eight hours despite the fact that labor was the scarc- 
est thing in Paris. The Red Cross employed soldiers on 
leave. French, red-fezzed Moroccans, and Indo-Chinese; 
with them as laborers a system of transportation was built 
up of light and heavy trucks which balked at no burden of 
traffic to any part of France. 

In one room of a Paris warehouse there were thirty tons 
of tobacco ; in another wing foodstuffs were stored in quan- 
tities to tax belief. Three hundred tons of coffee for example, 
a greater tonnage of beans, and everything else in proportion. 
It was not a storage ; it was a gate, through which this vol- 
ume of supplies flowed in a ceaseless stream. Attached to 
the warehouses were garages where repairs and reconstruc- 
tion were done upon the hundreds of machines which were 



"BACKING UP THE FRENCH" 161 

employed. Even in September of 1917, the motor trans- 
port was up to handling in and out of the Paris warehouses 
150 tons of freight a day. Even American threshing ma- 
chines were set in motion. In all the districts back of 
the lines were divisional warehouses to which the goods 
were carried for distribution. One of these was an old 
seminary which, when the Red Cross took possession, 
had fifty-two shell-holes in its walls. Most of these ware- 
houses were overrun in the German drive of 1918. After 
the armistice they were replaced by a chain of depots, 
extending from Lille to the eastern border, from which 
supplies were issued to the people returning to the 
devastated regions. 

To the French Army the American Red Cross lent every 
possible form of assistance. It set up spacious rest and 
recreation canteens in Paris and at several of the great in- 
tersection points along the railway lines, where thousands of 
French soldiers were made comfortable ; it established roll- 
ing canteens behind the lines ; and in conjunction with the 
French Government, after it got under way, it furnished 
hot meals to almost a million soldiers every month in huge 
canteens like lumber-camp barracks, where the weary poilu 
could not only eat and sing and forget his troubles, but 
bid good-by to his cooties, treat himself to a shower bath, 
a clean bunk and go away a happier human and once 
more fit to associate with his family. 

The story of the work of the American Red Cross in 
France for the French people and the French soldiers can 
never be correctly told without acknowledgment to the 
French Government and French officials everywhere for the 
hearty and never-failing cooperation in every endeavor. 
The Paris Temps, commenting on the Red Cross gifts and 
on Red Cross accomplishments in France, in December of 
1917 said : '^ We find proof in it that the German does not 
wholly monopolize, as he pretends, the secret of organiza- 

M 



1 

162 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

tion ; and that other nations can demonstrate, with ours, 
their energy in work and at the same time their powers of 
methodical appHcation and discipHned labor." 

Such was the beginning of the Red Cross accomplishment 
in France. 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE CHILDREN OF FRANCE 

The France of To-morrow — The Army of Refugee Children — Methods 
of Work — The CaU from Toul — The Work Reaches Dinard — 
Help in French Schools — Health Centers in Munition Districts — 
Children's Wards in Tuberculosis Hospitals — The Red Cross Flag 
at Nesle — A Traveling Dispensary — Evian — "The Gateway of 
a Hundred Sorrows" — Hospitals and Refuges — Child Welfare 
Exhibit at Lyons — German Policy in the Discharge of Refugees 
through Evian — French System in the Care of Refugees — Par- 
ticulars of American Red Cross Assistance. 

IF the old adage holds true that the boy is father to the 
man then one need have little fear for the future of 
France. It is to this France of the future, the new genera- 
tion that is growing up in a sense of comradeship with the 
millions of our own, that my thoughts now turn. And how 
near we of America are to these children of France is best 
told in the following letter from a fourteen-year-old school- 
girl to the American Red Cross : — 

"It was only a little river — almost a brook — it was called the Yser. 
One could talk from one side to the other without raising one's voice, and 
the birds could fly over it with one sweep of their wings. And on the two 
banks there were millions of men, the one turned toward the other, eye 
to eye. But the distance which separates them was greater than the 
stars in the sky — it was the distance which separates right from injustice. 

"The ocean is so vast that the sea-gulls do not dare to cross it. During 
seven days and seven nights the great steamships of America, going at 
full speed, drive through the deep waters before the lighthouses of France 
come into view — but from one side to the other hearts are touching." 

It was the effort of the Red Cross to still the cries of the 
children that went straight to the heart of France. If all 

163 



164 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

the rest had been beyond our power, this one thing would 
have won for us undying gratitude. For France, the 
saving of the children meant their future and their world. 

"There can be no real victory," said a Marseilles newspaper, "unless 
we can successfully combat child mortality. If we consider the enormous 
adult death rate for the war period, we can only conclude that after the 
war nothing will be left of France but a glorious skeleton — glorious in 
name but depleted in substance. The American Red Cross has come to 
aid us in the fight for our children. Because of this, if for no other reason, 
we owe the Society a debt of unbounded gratitude and affection." 

"If the Germans," wrote Alphonse Seche, "have changed the idea of 
war, the Americans are in process of changing the idea of alUance. The 
war being everywhere, menacing the race, our Allies have decided to be 
everywhere, in the front and in the rear ; shoulder to shoulder with our 
soldiers, standing side by side with our mothers over the cradles, for the 
preservation of our race." 

The pictures of Toul and Evian, of Nesle and Lyons, of 
Dinard and Dieppe, of Caudebec and Barenton and Issy- 
le-Molineaux, are etched into the very soul of France. They 
are a sage and cautious people these, who do not wear their 
hearts upon the sleeve. The vivacity which is their form 
of expression, the politeness which is their philosophy, the 
good manners which a wise man has said the French invented, 
— these are not France. They are merely the habiliment 
of its civilization. 

In America not all the children are clean; not all have 
enough to eat. The great East side finds some occupation 
. still for the welfare worker, but I do not believe America 
has yet any conception of the magnitude of the child prob- 
lem that existed in France. The condition was far worse 
than even the French people or its government had time in 
the tumult and stress of war to know. And it was growing 
even worse as the war progressed. There was the awful 
accumulation of refugee children from all the departments 
of the north and from Belgium and the shifting fortunes of 
war ; the pitiless rush of the Huns ; the increasing destruc- 



THE CHILDREN OF FRANCE 165 

tion from the air and the hungry shells, always ranging 
farther, leaving more and more little ones orphaned or 
maimed or shaken in understanding and memory. This 
was the greater company, the orphaned and the destitute, 
those whose fathers were dead or at the front, whose mothers 
were gone, and who had none to care for them. 

Added to all these was the army of repatriated children — 
including a host from Belgium — who, like the adults who 
came over the border, were suffering from the varied ills of 
malnutrition, if from nothing worse. That was not the 
whole story. Even the health of the children who had 
homes was running down. Epidemics of local character 
could not be checked. The average of doctors in America 
is one to 500 people; in France, where the call for nurses 
and physicians at the front had been incessant for three 
years, the ratio in 1917 was one to several thousand. That 
should tell its own story to people who have children of their 
own. The necessary lack of care and the scarcity of proper 
food made easy the progress of disease. With all the other 
crying needs that confronted the Red Cross at that moment, 
this peril to the child life loomed high. Much of the misery 
and disease was only too obvious, but there was a tremendous 
number of children needing treatment whom it was hard to 
reach or even to discover. And, to begin with, it was found 
necessary to rid the French people of the fixed idea that the 
American had come to deal solely with the soldier. It took 
time to do that, yet every moment of delay was courting 
more and more danger. 

To accomplish results, the Red Cross had to provide 
suitable places for operation and get the children together 
to examine aaid sort out the tuberculous and contagious 
cases, to provide nurses, labor, and medical supplies, den- 
tists and attendants and artisans to make requisite repairs 
at a time and in a land where every man who could carry 
a rifle was needed at the front. What all of this child army 



166 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

needed first was to get clean and to be fed, for the vast 
majority of them were hungry, and food of any kind was not 
plentiful, — much less the kind of food they needed. In the 
devastated regions, the Germans left nothing ! They had 
destroyed even stoves and water systems, so that in the 
districts back of portions of the lines the first desiderata 
of sanitary or medical activity were lacking. 

Numberless little charities, organized by nuns or by 
kindly women who were heartsick at the spectacle of so 
much misery, were trying in the cities to do something to 
stem the tide. To these, the Red Cross made haste to lend 
aid. Many of them, such for example as the refuge founded 
at the Hotel Biron by Madame Viviani, wife of the former 
premier of France, developed into a stronghold of good. 
In Moufettard, Paris, Mile, de Rose conducted another 
charity, which was founded by Mile, de Perignan, a 
granddaughter of Lafayette, comprising a social center, 
a home for working girls, a model tenement, a vacation 
home in the environs of Paris, and agricultural schools in 
the country. It lacked a health center, which the Red Cross 
supplied together with a dispensary and clinics for chil- 
dren and mothers ; it helped every Governmental effort 
to cope with the problem. These charities were chiefly in 
the cities. But along the highways and in the little towns 
there was great need and no ray of hope. Then out of 
obscurity rose the virile personality of the Prefet Mirman, 
who, when he shall have died and gone to the glory that 
is his due, will be the patron saint of the department of the 
Meurthe et Moselle. Without Prefet Mirman, Toul would 
have been as it has been for centuries, ever since Roman 
times, merely the rock-bound gate that has barred the 
invaders of many wars from the rich and industrious town 
of Nancy. But the Prefet, having faith added to hope and 
charity, believed the Americans meant what they said, 
and he gave to Toul a fame that will never die. 



THE CHILDREN OF FRANCE 167 

V>nien Nancy was under fire, life there was not worth a 
whisper, but the artisans of the town had to stay at their 
work for France needed them. They are a rugged folk, 
these workers of Nancy. In 1917, when the gas shells 
exploded they had been trained to gas masks and worked 
on, although the children, in panic, smothered and died 
in agony. They had no guard against that ghastly death. 
On July 26, the Prefet sent a classic telegram to the Com- 
mittee of the American Fund for French Wounded, begging 
for nurses and doctors. They went to the Red Cross 
offices just opened ; that night the chairman of the Secours 
aux Blesses left the Red Cross station in Paris with three 
camion loads of supplies and eleven doctors and nurses. 

As they rumbled into Toul in the gray of the dawn, there 
were five hundred women and children swarming the 
barracks which the French soldiers had abandoned. All 
was confusion ; dirt and vermin were over everything. In 
the Caserne de Luxembourg, — a group of barnlike structures 
on the sheltered plateau over Toul, — these women and 
doctors swept and scrubbed and scoured, installed beds 
and chairs and tables, and business began. 

It was slow work luring the confidence of the Lorrainers, 
but the ice was broken ; and until the spring of 1918, when 
the Huns pushed forward again, Toul was a lighthouse of 
mercy and health and happiness to the children of the 
north. From that the work was established until it reached 
Dinard. It would have made the old-time spendthrifts 
who dined and wined and danced and flirted in the great 
Hotel Royal open their eyes to see the swarm of refugee 
children who, in charge of the Red Cross doctors, took up 
life there in the wake of the soldiery that had used it as a 
barracks. They were doctored and brought back by care 
and nourishment to sturdy health; they went on with 
the schooling that is the reigning passion of the French 
child. The waifs, — the fatherless and motherless from 



168 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

the crowded wards of Paris, and the wasted repatries from 
the receiving station at Evian were sent to find in the salt 
air and water heahng a cure from the curse of bone tuber- 
culosis. There was clean, pure life there, a sowing of kind- 
ness that will some day yield a perpetual harvest of 
understanding and good will. 

Once having set out on children's relief, there was no 
turning back. More doctors and more nurses, more teachers 
and welfare workers kept coming from America. The Red 
Cross saw the necessity for help in some of the French 
schools, so work was begun in them. '^Unless we can 
start a canteen up here," wrote the doctor who conducted 
the children's clinic, '4n the Nineteenth arrondissement 
of Paris and give these children some food, this children's 
work is not going to get anywhere, because what these 
children need is nourishment and I can't do much till I can 
put something in their stomachs." 

The school luncheons had been cut down, but the Red 
Cross dietitians figured out the calories in what was left and 
found that there was need for wheat and sugar, so they built 
a Red Cross cake and added it to the ration. 

Rapidly the child welfare problem grew into one of the 
most extensive branches of Red Cross work. Health 
centers were opened in two munition districts just outside 
Paris, with welfare workers. Red Cross doctors, clinics, 
and visiting nurses who reached within a very short time 
three hundred families. It was very sorely needed. The 
population of the district had increased greatly; two 
hundred munition factories had risen like mushrooms over- 
night, with 110 new buildings erected for the workmen to 
live in. The congestion was terrible and the spread of 
disease likewise menacing when the Red Cross came to 
the rescue. 

A large area of Paris was covered in the same way. There 
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welfare was combined with the tuberculosis service, and 
children's wards were established in all the tuberculosis 
hospitals. In high, healthy country districts, the Director 
had farm schools established where weak children could be 
built up and taught to make things grow. The cardinal test 
of any project was what it promised for the future of the 
children and of France. Boys were taught trades and girls 
were taught sewing ; and among the denizens of the poorer 
quarters were promulgated the magic of the toothbrush 
and the rules of health — for which dentists came over- 
seas with all their tools. 

Nesle was another of the northern towns in the track of 
war which, after the '^strategic retirement'' of the Ger- 
mans, suffered bitterly. In four towns about it not a 
house or building of any nature had been left with one 
stone on another. When the Germans moved away, they 
destroyed everything that could be of service in any act 
of life. When the Red Cross doctors arrived in the old 
H6tel de Nesle it was stripped bare. From the outlying 
country, the children began drifting in, sullen, dazed, 
stunned by the horrors they had seen and suffered. And 
none smiled. A Red Cross woman, who worked at Nesle, 
said that the far horror in the eyes of the children was as 
if they were looking beyond the things of this earth and into 
the gates of Judgment. 

Here again was a work for Hercules, and it practically 
wore them out. Throughout the first week all the patients 
of the clinic were Red Cross workers. There was no heat, 
and for a day or two no gauze or bandages or dressings; 
but there were twelve hundred children who needed care 
and the Red Cross toiled away to give it. It goes without 
saying that it cost much hardship to raise the Red Cross 
flag at Nesle ! 

The Red Cross designed, and built in Paris, a traveling 
dispensary — an automobile hospital, with drugs and supplies 



170 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

of all sorts and an outside seat on which a nurse could trans- 
port a sick child to the hospital. With this mercy wagon, 
the workers went from town to town about the district. 
Through the countryside, the children were afflicted with 
skin diseases and with strange forms of blood ailment, 
caused largely by malnutrition. 

This working for the children of France was a day to day 
and an all day and all night dealing with the plain animal 
facts of sick and ill-nourished bodies. There were women 
fighting the good fight of the Red Cross against the miseries 
of Europe who, perhaps, have never found the glory that 
they longed for ; but they found what was better — their 
own mother hearts that they had never known. 

Someone has called Evian les Bains the ^'Gateway of a 
Hundred Sorrows." It was here, as the war wore on and the 
food supply began to dwindle, that Germany, balancing up 
her efficiency schedules, turned back into hungry France 
the sorry army of French and Belgian civilians who had been 
taken from the devastated country in the north in the first 
onrush of 1914, and since held in bondage. In the summer 
of 1917, this wretched jetsam of the German war was herded 
over the frontier at the rate of a thousand or more a day. 
Daily, for a long time, two trains, morning and night, 
rolled in from the German border. A woman who w^atched 
their debarkation day after day said in a letter at that time : 
''The curtain never falls at Evian." It was so. In the 
drama that France lived behind her roaring battle lines, 
there was no more somber scene than Evian. Here, again, 
as at Dinar d, and other one-time resorts on the northern 
coasts, was a gruesome contrast with the ancient atmosphere 
of fashion, wealth, and idleness. Nestling on the hills above 
exquisite Lake Geneva, Evian was the last setting to be 
chosen for so woeful a spectacle. 

From forty to sixty per cent of these cast-offs were chil- 
dren, by far the greater part of them under twelve years of 



THE CHILDREN OF FRANCE 171 

age. A great number were dying from tuberculosis, many- 
far advanced; but all were unutterably dirty, half clad, 
worn to emaciation with sorrow and hunger and slavery. 
They were moribund. Germany could wring no more 
unpaid labor from them. They had given to the uttermost 
pfennig's worth. The people beyond the Rhine picked 
out those who seemed past hope and sent them to France 
to be cared for. They were a multitude, — and these chil- 
dren were not riffraff. Many of them had known luxury 
and the tenderest care. 

It was all one wretched, miserable story after another; 
and yet, from the gray monotony of it, two cases seem to 
stand out in the memory of those who saw them for the 
reason that they proclaim more clearly than others, perhaps, 
two salient phases of German brutahty : one was a wisp of 
a girl, just turned fourteen, who bore in her arms a year old 
boche baby ; and the second, only a little older and marked 
with tuberculosis, had for three years worked twelve hours a 
day in a German coal mine. It is manifestly impossible to 
tell all the stories of the unfortunates of Evian ; but thou- 
sands of them are recorded in the files there against the day 
when the world may know the depth of German iniquity. 

When the train wound its way up the grades into the famous 
old watering place there was a band playing the Marseillaise, 
and the French and Belgian flags were waving. There was 
the Mayor and half the town crying welcome to them — 
welcome back to France — and still they did not smile. 
French and American stretcher-bearers boarded the trains 
to take out those that were too crippled or too weak to help 
themselves, and there were Red Cross ambulances there to 
carry these helpless ones away to the old Casino, which had 
been converted into a hospital. There were these heart- 
breaking processions every day, at morning and evening, 
hundreds of children and aged people at a time, ambhng 
on toward rest and kindly care, with faces haggard and 



172 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

drawn but singing out of numb hearts their homeland 
songs ; and men and women with hearts torn at the picture, 
stood in crowds by the wayside with tears raining down 
their faces at the misery and the glory of it, and were not 
ashamed. 

'^The scene," says the Chief of the Children's Relief, 
in his professional report, ^4s indescribably emotional." 

The story of Evian cannot be told. Mothers and chil- 
dren met there who had been lost to each other ever since 
the Germans surged over Belgium. It was a great, over- 
powering drama of mingled sorrow and happiness, of death 
— yes, and of resurrection. These children were marked 
for death, but they were caught in the very nick of time. 
And even so, there were sad little funerals now and then 
wending through the village streets. But as an institution 
it went with a mathematical precision, by every means 
that science or sentiment could devise, bringing health to 
sick and exhausted bodies ; and smiles to faces that one 
might have thought could never smile again. There were 
children who came to Evian, marked for death in a thousand 
ways, but who, through the ministrations of mercy there, 
will go singing their way on to the end of their poor little 
blasted lives. 

From all the touching records of the station which are 
held in the archives of the Red Cross, I take almost at 
random this paragraph which, like a ray of sunlight, reveals 
the other side of the picture : — 

^'He was crippled, horribly crippled. Only his hands 
and his eyes seemed to be alive, but he said proudly that 
the Germans would never have let him through if they had 
known how many pairs of stockings he could make in a day 
on his knitting machine, which we have given him to make 
him forget." 

Among the many hospitals and refuges which were estab- 
lished all over France to receive this wreckage, there are 



THE CHILDREN OF FRANCE 173 

several in the vicinity of Lyons, chief of which is the Chateau 
des Halles, built by Mangini, the great French railroad 
builder, whose widow gave it to the French government 
for use during the war. Lyons is a child town ; and the 
Red Cross, with a broad idea of starting in France a general 
movement for child hygiene, selected it for the scene of its 
first child welfare exhibits. The timid said it wouldn't 
go. It was early in April, 1918, the great drive was on 
and two hundred miles to the north men were dying under 
the German guns. Who could think of expositions? But 
in the week that it was in progress more than 100,000 
persons between eight in the morning and ten at night 
crowded into the hall. There is no doubt it was an American 
show ; but by the same token it had at its opening session 
twelve hundred doctors, lawyers, government officials, 
founders of hospitals, and the best citizens of Lyons. For 
the first time in the memory of man there sat on the same 
platform the Cardinal Archbishop of Lyons, the Prefet of 
the Rhone, the Military Governor, and the Mayor of the 
town. Neither Church nor State could shut its eyes to the 
patent fact that here was the path to the salvation of France. 
And it was a great show ! It was a veritable field day for 
the toothbrush, and an American dentist operated while 
his assistant preached the gospel of dentifrice. 

There was, also, a great demonstration of the sterilization 
of milk ; and outside, in the square, there was a playground 
with equipment for basketball, swings, sHdes, sandboxes 
for babies, and all such means of outdoor exercise for the 
making of strong, sturdy children. 

In a glass '^greenhouse" in the center of the hall at regular 
intervals each day. Red Cross nurses washed French babies ; 
the Lyons mothers watched the whole process down to 
the sanitary and scientific disposition of the last towel. 

On the last day of the show, a poilu was found by one of 
the nurses copying the dietaries from a poster. 



174 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

^'I can fight no more/' he said; ''when I went to the 
front I had a wife and seven children. My wife was killed 
by an air bomb, and the children had no one to care for 
them — so four of them died. I am reforme, but I can 
work for them, and now I know what to feed them to make 
them grow strong. That is the main thing." 

These are simple, homely things. They seemed small 
in the vast tumult and upheaval of a world at war, but out 
of the sum total of them, and the French know it well 
enough, is coming that second army which, now that the 
cannon are silent, is to win for France the battle for her 
place among the nations and so complete the victory over 
the Hun. 

By January 1st, over fifty thousand of these people had 
passed through the little station, and Evian had become 
not only a tragedy but a real menace to the health and 
future of France. 

Analyzed from the German standpoint, there were three 
great primary purposes served in the holding and the final 
discharge of these people : First, the labor which they 
contributed was of a cheapness which, otherwise, would 
have been impossible. They cost nothing but the bare 
food to keep them alive, and, as their condition showed, 
received far less than they needed. They were driven by 
every form of terrorization and abuse to do all their wrecked 
bodies could endure ; second, when by reason of inevitable 
exhaustion and disease their labor no longer showed in the 
German accounting a balance of profit, the efficiency experts 
of Berlin converted them into an active military force. 

This is not purely figurative. The plaintive picture of 
these broken people at Evian does not at first blush suggest 
anything of military value ; they could not operate artillery 
or machine guns nor charge trenches, but there were deadly 
injuries which, properly utilized, they might inflict upon 
their own country. Germany figured that the unloading of 




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THE CHILDREN OF FRANCE 175 

these people on France would make a serious draft upon 
physicians and nurses, money, hospital supplies, clothing, 
and transportation. In all of these France was seriously 
reduced ; third, and far the more serious purpose, was to 
undermine for all future time the strength of France by 
weakening her child population and distributing throughout 
her borders the carriers of disease. 

France could not know the extent of Germany's sup- 
ply of this deadly ammunition. The number of military 
prisoners taken by the Germans was passably well estab- 
lished in the Allied countries, by the army records ; but of the 
great population of Belgium and northern France that had 
simply vanished into the tempest — there was no means 
of estimating how many of these had died, how many 
remained to be used as an instrument against the welfare 
of France. And the reserve forces for meeting it at this 
time were in the worst possible condition. 

What the Germans did not reckon on was the assistance 
which in this crisis came to France from the American 
people. The American R,ed Cross was the x quantity in 
the equation ; and it was here that with the short vision 
which in the crucial things has seemed to be a German 
failing, the plans of the Prussian strategists went awry. 

Before the coming of the American Red Cross, the French 
government, realizing its danger, had made well-planned 
efforts to offset it. 

The French government, the Comite de Service des 
Repatries d'Evian de Thonon d'Annemasse, and the Comite 
de Secours aux Repatries de Lyon had worked out a system 
of caring for the repatriates, which was prosecuted with 
what vigor and thoroughness was possible. A physician 
boarded each convoy train at St. Jingolph, on the Swiss 
border, to single out such of the company as were too ill 
to be taken from the station to the Casino. Upon the 
arrival of the train these were removed at once to the 



176 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

hospital, those badly exhausted to the rest-house, and the 
remainder were taken either on foot or in ambulances to 
the Casino. The first effort at Evian was to restore the 
repatriates to a mental state which would facilitate the 
work of their handling and distribution. After being fed 
and cheered up, they were arranged in the great hall in 
alphabetical groups, and full personal details taken. An 
elaborate system of card indexes was established for the pur- 
pose of fixing the identity of each man, woman, and child, 
residence, remaining family, so far as known, and their 
whereabouts. 

Telegraphic inquiries were instituted to ascertain if the 
repatriate had friends or relatives remaining to whom he 
could be sent. If there were none, he was forwarded to some 
prefecture in the center, west, southwest, or southeast, to 
be located permanently by the prefet Houses vacated by 
the war were used for this purpose, as well as for housing 
of refugees, the government making an allowance for main- 
tenance. A system of colored tags such as is used in America 
for immigrants, was employed to facilitate distribution. 
Only in some such way could these swarms be handled. 
The sick were housed according to the nature of their illness, 
and on recovery the children whose friends could not be 
found were sent to institutions, chiefly those near Lyons. 
Old persons, not claimed, were dispatched to formations 
created by the Ministry of the Interior. 

It was obvious, however, that with the continuance of 
these deliveries, the facilities for their disposal would soon 
be overtaxed, and the repatriates would become what 
Germany had intended — an unbearable burden and a 
menace both to France and to our army. 

So the Red Cross set about assisting the French in the 
development of further hospital facilities and transportation 
for patients, and the provision of dispensary service at the 
Evian Casino, so that every repatriate could receive prompt 



THE CHILDREN OF FRANCE 177 

medical inspection and care; also, of the establishment of 
convalescent hospitals for those recovering after treatment. 
A large hotel was converted into a hospital, and then the 
beautiful Chateau des Halles was taken over from the city 
of Lyons, to which it had been given by its owner for use 
as a children's convalescent hospital. 

The dispatch of the tuberculous was attended with some 
difficulty but was soon satisfactorily adjusted. Meantime, 
largely through the aid of the Lyons' committees, the 
expansion of the convalescent system was continued. The 
people of Evian objected to any permanent hospitals 
in their neighborhood, particularly for the tuberculous. 
Evian was, and remained, a clearing house in which the 
whole solution of the repatriate problem of France had its 
center. 

For what reason the German government chose to make 
its deliveries of repatriates intermittently has never been 
disclosed ; but there were intervals when for a fortnight 
these deliveries were wholly discontinued. These were of 
the greatest importance, as in every instance they chanced 
to coincide with the requirements of the Red Cross or- 
ganizers for time to get their equipment in order, and gave 
the French Committee breathing space to enlarge its facilities 
for handhng the repatriates both at Evian and at the second 
stage in the orphanages and hospitals at Lyons. In the 
interval from October 15th to November 5th, the staff of 
Red Cross nurses from Paris and new suppUes of hospital 
equipment and materials were taken to Evian, and the 
hospitals received a large number of cases and were in 
good running order before convoys were resumed. 

With the advent of the Red Cross forces came a great 
increase in the speed and efficacy of the work at Evian. 
The medical service was combined with social welfare work, 
and repatriate mothers, who awaited children under treat- 
ment, were organized into a working force. What impressed 

N 



178 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

the French was not alone the rapidity and thoroughness of 
the American staff in handhng their cases, which quickly 
ran into thousands, but the range of their efforts. When 
a sick repatriate child went out of Evian, he had not only 
been far advanced toward cure of his ailment, but every 
physical tendency had been charted, his teeth fixed up, 
his dietary and exercise prescribed, and his mother in- 
structed in the essentials of hygiene and sanitation and 
provided with a manual of simple instruction. The new 
and, obviously, vital factor in all this work, as shown in the 
French Committee's report, was the tact and sympathy 
of the American workers, from the doctors down, but the 
system was severely thorough. At the request of the 
French authorities, parents were permitted to visit children 
in isolation hospitals, but they were supplied with caps and 
gowns, and were compelled t^o wash their hands and faces 
in antiseptic solutions before leaving. 

If there be any doubt concerning the contribution that 
the American people has made through its commission to 
the Red Cross, Evian with its correlated hospitals and rest 
places, its competent medical work and its correlated 
demonstration of the value of hygienic methods among the 
French working people, would be sufficient to dispel it. 



CHAPTER XIV 

SWITZERLAND THE CENTRAL STATION 

International Committee at Geneva — International Agency for Prisoners 
of War — Swiss Activities in the Interest of Prisoners — Reports 
on Prison Camps — Great Scarcity of Food and Supplies in Switzer- 
land — Gift of the American Red Cross to the Swiss — Food for 
American Prisoners Sent through the Red Cross — Receipt Cards — 
Communication Service Enlarged through the Committee at Berne — 
Red Cross Commission to Switzerland — Hospital for Tuberculous 
Serbian Officers — The Swiss Evacuee Problem — Itahan Problems 
in Switzerland — Help for Belgian Children — Number and Isola- 
tion of Prison Camps — Process of Locating Prisoners and Providing 
for Them Thoroughly Systematized — Money Sent Prisoners Paid 
in German Prison Script. 

NOTWITHSTANDING that our experience in the past 
war, with its imperious demands for big things to be 
done in a hurry, for unheard-of production both of men and 
materials, has given us an accurate measure of what we can 
accomplish when our brains and hands are fairly put to the 
test, I am not at all sure that it would not be a good thing 
for some millions of self-satisfied Americans to discover 
that there are some remarkable people in the world besides 
themselves. Take the Swiss people, for instance : Switzer- 
land, as we all know, was the parent of the Red Cross 
throughout the world, and when the storm broke the Inter- 
national Committee at Geneva, with no resources other 
than its own, struggled bravely with a problem which was 
great at best but the magnitude of which was doubled by 
its nearness. 

For Switzerland entertained no doubts regarding her 

179 



180 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

position in the war. There was, to be sure, the great natural 
barrier of the Alps, but living as she did in the very middle 
of the war, with cannon echoing on all her borders, it was 
absolutely necessary that she keep an army of half a million 
men in a high state of preparedness, a compulsory service 
that cost her not a few million francs. 

None the less, there was no phase of Red Cross activity in 
which the Swiss were not engaged with all the determination 
and foresight that they possess to so great a degree. It is 
not possible, of course, to discuss all their efforts. Lest, 
however, our Red Cross should be inclined to boast of the 
successful attempt we made to care for our prisoners of war 
in Germany, it will be salutary to know that the Swiss Red 
Cross began the formulation of the system and laid its 
groundwork in 1914. Its own view of its achievement has 
been modestly recorded thus : 1914, improvisation ; 1915- 
1916, organization; 1917, coordination. Consequently, 
when the United States finally came into the war, the Inter- 
national Agency for Prisoners of War was a well-run and well- 
equipped organization. And that same year the Prix de 
Vertu Charrau and the Nobel Peace Prize were awarded 
to the International Committee in recognition of its work 
in the cause of humanity and charity. 

Despite the obstacles that stood in the way, a complete 
file was kept — always open for consultation — of evacuated, 
repatriated, and deceased prisoners. There was an Entente 
Department with a section for Greece which forwarded 
correspondence to prisoners at Gorlitz ; a section for France 
concerning itself chiefly with search for the dead and the 
missing; another for Russia working through the German 
Red Cross into Poland ; and still another for Great Britain 
which sent money to British prisoners in enemy countries. 
Besides these, there was correspondence with occupied 
Serbia, not to mention a department for the Central Empires. 

At the same period, the Bureau International de la Paix 



SWITZERLAND THE CENTRAL STATION 181 

was handling some 350 letters a day to and from prison camps 
and all parts of the field of war, seeking the missing, finding 
the burial places of the dead, and sending to sorrowing 
people the only small comfort they could ever hope for. 

Here is a paragraph from a report of one of their 
members : — 

"I cannot refrain from adding an optimistic note to this account 
of our efforts to mitigate so much sadness and suffering. And having 
opened hundreds of letters from German famihes, after filing thousands 
of letters from French, English, and Belgian families, I arrive at the con- 
clusion that the mentality of the great masses who are passing through the 
anguish of doubt and despair is of moral quality much more elevated 
than one could have believed. It goes without saying that we have 
strange revelations, to say no more, about the private life of certain 
famiUes. It remains none the less true that in the uncouth letters of 
ignorant women, peasants and working women, whether they come from 
the mountains of Bavaria or those of Auvergne, from the coast of Flanders 
or that of Scotland, one often finds expressions of gratitude, of serenity, 
of confidence, which moisten the eyelids, even though they are the eyelids 
of an old practitioner. It is still among the humble and the disinherited 
of this world that the Carpenter of Nazareth has disciples after his own 
heart." 

As far back as 1917 delegates from Switzerland had been 
sent to Germany, Austria, Belgium, France, Spain, Den- 
mark, England, Sweden, Egypt, and India to inspect and 
report on the prison camps. Arrangements were made for 
correspondence with the occupied regions of France, Alsace, 
Belgium, and Rumania and for the repatriation of women, 
children, the aged, and the sick, that they should no longer 
be repatriated in groups, but that each case must be taken 
up individually. 

The International Committee overlooked nothing for 
which warrant existed in the articles of the convention or 
the rules of war in its care for the interests of imprisoned 
men; and, as a result of many complaints, following the 
visits of its delegates to the prison camps, it made insistent 



182 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

demand upon the belligerents for recognition of the right 
of imprisoned men to a decent allotment of space and ade- 
quate measure of exercise to maintain health. Moreover, 
it urged upon all the countries at war the wisdom of per- 
mitting their officers, when imprisoned, to give their parole 
as justification for freedom of movement. And that the 
attitude of the Swiss throughout the trying period of the 
war was most admirable and ideally neutral, is shown in the 
statement from the ^'General Catalogue covering the Benev- 
olent Work of Switzerland during the Present War'^ : 
'^ Switzerland gave to French prisoners 250,000 kilos of bread, 
while nearly 4,000,000 letters for prisoners of war were 
handled in August, 1916. . . .'' (The Swiss post-office had 
become a benevolent institution.) 

A fairly accurate idea of the extent of Swiss activi- 
ties follows : for the forwarding of letters and the trans- 
fer of money to prisoners, they went to not a little 
pains to perfect their system; they fought for changes in 
the postal regulations of warring countries which should 
simplify and expedite the process of transfer; they placed 
freely at the disposition of the belligerents every service 
that Switzerland's government or its civilian population, 
for that matter, could render looking to prisoners' relief; 
in conjunction with the Danish Red Cross, — which early in 
1918 sent a delegate to Geneva, — the International Society 
moved for the establishment at Paris of a bureau analogous 
to that founded by the Danish Red Cross at Berlin. Its 
object was to provide mental relief to prisoners by means of 
books, games, and sports ; to secure admission to personal 
relation with the prisoners ; to look after the food supplies 
and the inspection of camps ; and it secured the promise of 
this arrangement in behalf of German prisoners on condition 
of complete reciprocity by Germany. 

The reports on the prison camps were thorough and 
enlightening. 



SWITZERLAND THE CENTRAL STATION 183 

In January, 1918, the Society had been obhged to abohsh 
the dehvery of food packages to the section camps because 
the expenses were growing with the increase of prisoners. 
Assistance was lacking ; food was scarce ; and the reserves 
had been used up. Moreover, there were more and more 
French arriving and they did not receive the packages sent 
— in many cases not even so much as one a month. Com- 
plaint was made that the sanitary condition of the camps was 
bad. There was plaintive cry for help to enable the Society 
to render assistance to sick prisoners. Away back in 1917, 
the Committee had been fighting against the growing 
meagerness of the food supply. The reflection of conditions 
in the German and Austrian camps, from the Committee's 
reports, was not cheerful. A fund was urged to secure 
food with reasons as follows : — 

^'The prisoners suffer more and more from hunger. The 
food they receive from Germany and Austria is insufficient. 
Their rations are the same as those allowed the civil popu- 
lation but do not equal those of the armies. Some of the 
causes for increased mortahty among prisoners might be 
successfully combated if it were possible to get food. In 
Rumania the mortality has increased three hundred and 
forty-five fold above normal.'' 

Everywhere war and war makers were consuming the 
supplies. The civilian populations were taking in their 
belts. Societies of women in every country in Europe were 
scraping Httle supplies of food together, but daily these 
dwindled. The French and English prisoners Hved almost 
exclusively on food sent from France and overburdened 
little Switzerland, and prayed that it might not fail. Sup- 
pHes were sent from Switzerland to the Belgians ; the internal 
Italians had little save the Swiss donations; while great 
numbers of Russian prisoners — held in the part of France 
occupied by the Germans — were slowly starving to death, 
although Switzerland was sending them a share of its victuals. 



184 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

Imprisoned Rumanians had fifty kilos of food a month from 
Sweden and there were 79,000 of them, — all of which distri- 
bution resolved itself into a mathematical problem of no 
small proportion. 

'^It is absolutely impossible,'' said the Swiss Committee, 
'Ho get the necessary food in Europe. In Asia and China 
it is equally impossible. It is, therefore, necessary that the 
supplies for the prisoners of war must come from either 
North or South America ; it is al^o of equal importance 
that the question be settled before the coming winter, when 
new restrictions governing the work of neutrals shall be in 
force and whereby the prisoners will receive less and less 
from the Austro-Germans." 

To say the least no more dismal outlook is conceivable than 
that which Switzerland, the innocent bystander, faced with 
pockets and granaries alike empty. She was fairly mother- 
ing the multitudinous waifs of Serbia, whose sufferings under 
the bitter Austrian onslaught had passed all power of de- 
scription. In Geneva and Berne there were bureaus 
organized to give the Serbians help, but the transportation 
was hard and uncertain, and the Serbs went on dying. The 
Swiss cities were full, as was France, of Serbian officers 
and men who were sick and penniless and dying of tuber- 
culosis ; but, for all that, they were happy in their estate 
when contrasted with the wretched remnants elsewhere. 
The cantons were overrun with the sick and homeless of all 
the world. The cities were crowded with representatives 
of every country till in Berne and Geneva there was not a 
house to be had for love or money. 

The picture that had been painted of prisoners' life in 
the German and Austrian prison camps had made them 
more than a thing of dread than even the cannons or the 
gas. The subterfuge of food, which Kultur spat upon before 
it was proffered, the filth, the crowding, the merciless labor, 
the cold and the brutal usage — these were the softest forms 



SWITZERLAND THE CENTRAL STATION 185 

of vengeance that the repatriate prisoners of Allied nations 
reported when they came back from their confinement. 

Facing such possibilities, the heavily handicapped Swiss 
organization for prisoners' relief was as the shadow of a great 
rock in a weary land. The American Red Cross gave the 
Swiss $125,000, to assist in work among their own destitute 
Swiss population and the Allied troops and civilians in transit 
from Germany and Austria. There were at the opening of 
the war only about 75 Americans interned in Germany, 
chiefly the members of merchant crews from American 
vessels. But as the American soldier began to take his 
place in the French battle Hne the number slowly grew. In 
the spring of 1918 the Red Gross, through the International 
Committee in Berne, was supplying food, clothing, and other 
needed things — for account of the Government — to 230 
Americans scattered among the detention pens of Germany. 
The Red Cross box weighed ten pounds, — four of which went 
to every man each fortnight, — and contained two and one 
half pounds of corned beef, two pounds of bread, one pound 
of biscuits, one pound of sugar, three quarters of a pound of 
pork and beans, one fifth of a pound of cocoa, one pound of 
coffee, a pound of oleomargarine, half a pound of soap, and 
fifty cigarettes. While this list was standard it was varied 
from time to time. 

The Swiss Committee had devised a system of receipt 
cards upon which the prisoner himself acknowledged 
receipt of the delivery. If the card did not return, in- 
vestigation was started through the German and Swiss 
Red Cross or through the Spanish embassy at BerHn. There 
was also space on the card for the recipient to indicate any 
articles of which he might stand in need. Letters received 
from the prison camps showed that American prisoners lived 
wholly on the food sent by the Red Cross and turned over 
their prison rations to the unfortunates of other countries. In 
a year the Red Cross had sent to the stores in Berne for dis- 



186 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

tribution to American prisoners tons upon tons of supplies 
which included food, clothing, tobacco, soap, mending out- 
fits, toilet cases, stationery, pencils, shoe laces, brushes, and 
other useful things too numerous to mention. 

Incidentally, the Quartermaster's Department was unable 
to help as much as was expected. Upon our entry into the 
war it was prepared to furnish supplies of food to last 10,000 
men six months ; but the burden of ocean traffic was so great 
in the transport of men and military materials that only in 
the spring of 1918 were these supplies beginning to arrive 
in Switzerland. 

It was early in the year that the Red Cross decided to 
increase the scope of its communication service. Organized, 
primarily, to maintain a source of dependable information 
for relatives concerning men in army service, to search for 
the missing, to find in the haystack of war's confusion the 
needles of fact for which anxious families at home were 
waiting regarding their men at the front, the service was 
now expanded to furnish information, through the Com- 
mittee at Berne, concerning American prisoners and to es- 
tablish, where possible, communication between them and 
their families. The Bureau was also licensed as the sole 
agency for the transmission of money to American prisoners 
in Germany. It undertook to maintain communication 
between persons in this country and their relatives or friends 
in every territory. But it was not until June, 1918, that the 
United States Government arranged through the Swiss 
Government and the Spanish Embassy in Berlin to intern 
American invalid prisoners in Switzerland. 

As easily as can be imagined, the rapidly growing num- 
bers of American soldiers in Europe made it necessary to 
provide fully for the care of such as might be taken 
prisoners ; and with this purpose in view the Red Cross in 
June of 1918 appointed a Commission to Switzerland to super- 
intend all relief work for both American and Allied prisoners, 



SWITZERLAND THE CENTRAL STATION 187 

and citizens of Allied powers resident in Switzerland, and to 
aid the Swiss in their efforts to reheve the universal suffering. 
The budget of the Commission for this work to December 
31st, called for a total of $1,972,323.75. Up to that time 
the Red Cross expenditure had been only $200,000, of which 
$75,000 was for the care of the interned Russians. 

I have already said that the position of Switzerland was 
desperate. Stripped of food by the flood of people that 
either passed through her territory or were quartered upon 
her, she was between the upper and nether millstones: 
Germany was in a position to shut off her supply of fuel, 
and France could forbid her food. Meantime, the tourists, 
who were her chief source of revenue, were absent and in 
their stead came a tremendous inflow of hungry, half-clothed 
people from everywhere, — a vast army of mouths for which, 
in the name of common humanity, food must be found. 

To relieve Switzerland herself was part of the task of the 
American Red Cross Commission, which proceeded to adjust 
the supply and storage system for prisoners by the estabhsh- 
ment of houses at a small town, near Lausanne, and at Biim- 
phz in the outskirts of Berne, where new buildings were erected ; 
the Commission, also, made a review of the difficulties be- 
setting the Swiss organization, which resulted in a contribu- 
tion of 500,000 francs to be used solely for the Swiss Red 
Cross work among the Swiss population and for the rehef 
of AUied troops or AUied civilians in transit from Germany 
and Austria. This action, suspending as it did the drain 
on the Swiss organization, caused great happiness among the 
Swiss people, while there was strong disapproval in Berlin. 
Definite arrangements were also made for distribution of 
relief to the destitute Russians. 

At Leysin, the Comnussion found a concrete house con- 
taining seventy-five rooms, each having an outside sleeping- 
porch, which it proceeded to take over and prepare for a 
hospital for tuberculous Serbian officers. Medical attend- 



188 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

ance was provided by the Swiss and the Red Cross made a 
per diem allowance for each patient. This work, I wish to 
add, was planned with the cooperation of the Serbian 
minister. 

Switzerland, too, had its repatriate problem, or rather 
evacues problem. The poor wretches — women, young 
children, and old men, whom the Germans had taken from 
their homes in northern France — were coming into Swiss 
territory at the rate of 1200 a day. Many of them had 
walked miles to the train, and their feet were bruised and 
swollen. All had ridden for two or three days, unfed, un- 
washed, uncared for. With only brief notice Germany had 
begun unloading these sorry folk at Basle in November gf 
1917. A local committee had provided 225,000 francs 
toward caring for them, which began with facilities for 
washing in the railway station and a small infirmary such 
as the Red Gross maintains at its canteen stations in America. 
There was a room for feeding the wanderers, a special car 
for bathing and dressing babies, and a storeroom for clothing 
and necessities. The Swiss Government fed them, while 
other necessities, including clothing, were provided by 
charity. As at Evian in France, an elaborate card index 
system of information was maintained by volunteer women 
for the purpose of securing information which might assist 
in reuniting families. It was the same old picture of sickness, 
dirt and misery that we have seen in France, repellant but 
heartbreaking in its appeal. 

From Bouveret these wayfarers were distributed through 
southern France, and 10,000 of them passed weekly through 
the confines of Switzerland on their way to homes that were 
far away and that would only be accessible when the Germans 
should be beaten back. 

There was an Italian problem, too. Indeed, there was no 
problem that Switzerland did not have ! At Buchs, where 
2500 Italian soldiers poured through each month on their 



SWITZERLAND THE CENTRAL STATION 189 

way back into Italy, the American Red Cross established a 
canteen. These returning Italians were sorry pilgrims, — 
many of whom were badly wounded while others were tuber- 
culous, lacking in underclothing, stockings and, in many 
cases, were without shoes. Moreover, most of them were 
half starved, or worse, since almost every train had its 
quota of those who had been unable to stand the ordeal of 
the journey and had died on the way. 

In addition there was a great army of interned soldiers in 
Switzerland who were looked after by the officers of the Swiss 
army. The minds of many of them had been shaken by the 
shocks of war and the deprivations and maltreatment of 
the Teuton prison camps, and with nothing to occupy their 
minds or engross their attention they were a great and grow- 
ing menace. Various societies were formed to furnish them 
with employment in workrooms, in the manufacture of 
leather goods, glassware, beadwork, portable houses, fur- 
niture, and various other things. In many instances these 
men were barely fit to work ; while others had been idle so 
long that they had lost the faculty of working. The output 
of these ateliers was sent to America and found immediate 
sale. The first problem was raw material, for the Swiss 
resources were no longer able to provide for them or to pay 
the freight of the products to the American market. The 
Red Cross devoted 750,000 francs to the establishment of 
these workrooms and training-schools for soldiers interned 
in Switzerland and founded a bureau for the sale of their 
products in America. Over $40,000 worth of these things 
were sold within a year. 

Two workrooms for making hospital and relief supplies 
were added by the Red Cross. The places were reconstructed 
and re-equipped for extended production of regular standard 
Red Cross supplies, needy women being employed in their 
manufacture. Much of the product, such as underwear 
for women and children, was used immediately at Basle. 



190 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

In Geneva there was an American Red Cross Chapter con- 
ducting workrooms at the Palais Eynard. The Commission 
planned to establish units of Americans at Zurich, St. Gaul, 
and Lucerne who might be relied upon for assistance when 
American soldiers should come to be interned in Switzerland. 

But it did not end there : at Fribourg there were 2000 
Belgian children who had been under the protection of 
the American Red Cross Commission of Belgium, and their 
numbers grew steadily with successive evacuations ; Switzer- 
land was full of tuberculous, of all ages and races and degrees 
of helplessness. Swarms of civilian Serbs were crying for 
help from desolate Serbia whose sufferings at that time were 
terrible ! The Red Cross proposed the sending of a Swiss- 
American relief force to Belgrade to establish a dispensary 
and distribute relief. There was trouble over the Italian 
prisoners in Austria for whom Italy could not care. Italian 
societies were ready to relieve them, but food and clothing 
were unobtainable. There was no doubt of their appalling 
condition. Those who passed through Buchs gave proof 
enough that all the harrowing tales were true. Innumer- 
able packages, sent by friends from Italy and from the two 
Americas, never found their destination or were worthless 
from bad packing. There was undoubtedly an improvement 
in the whole prison camp situation in the German and Aus- 
trian territory — more prompt and certain delivery of food 
shipments. Upon packages sent to American prisoners from 
Berne the record showed that the system functioned per- 
fectly. Ninety-five per cent of these were delivered without 
interference, and the condition of the camps where Americans 
were detained was reported as good. Food conditions in 
Germany were stringent. Returning prisoners said that 
where the packages were received the prisoners fared better 
than their keepers. 

There were in Germany twenty-seven prison camps, of 
which Tuchel near Danzig was selected to be the chief place 



SWITZERLAND THE CENTRAL STATION 191 

of detention of Americans. In nearly all the twenty-seven 
centers, among them Tuchel, Berlin, Havelberg, Parchim, 
Brandenburg, Cassel, Langensalza, Cologne, Siegburg, 
Aachen, Limburg, Mainz, Giessen, Darmstadt, Heidelberg, 
Karlsruhe, Villingen, Rastatt, Bayreuth, and Landshut, 
there were American captives in June, 1918, either captured 
soldiers or seafarers who had been collected from submarined 
ships. There were reports from 231 men, and to all of them 
packages were being sent from the warehouses at Berne by 
the Red Cross, acting as distributing agent for the Army or 
Navy which provided the supplies. Villingen was the camp 
for the officers. 

Data obtainable in midsummer indicated that there were 
about 200 more captured Americans who had not yet been 
located permanently. There was food enough then stored 
up in Berne to last 22,000 prisoners for half a year if required. 
Three American prisoners in Tuchel had been appointed a 
Red Cross ReKef Committee, — custodians of liberal sup- 
plies sent there for the use of prisoners when they should 
arrive, — and similar supplies were ready for immediate 
distribution to other camps. When it became apparent 
that the Germans were slow to give notice of the transfer of 
prisoners from one camp to another, heads of the French 
Relief at Berne and the Prisoners' Depots at Paris and Lyons 
issued orders to French Committees in all the German camps 
to supply new American arrivals with whatever they 
required. 

Arrangements had been made that all, or nearly all, of the 
German prison camps should be stocked with similar emer- 
gency supplies, in anticipation of the wants of those who 
were unfortunate enough to fall into the hands of the enemy. 
There were approximately 200 main prison camps in Ger- 
many and some 10,000 prison groups, counting the small 
detachments of prisoners sent out to do farm labor. The 
American Red Cross laid plans to supply all these work 



192 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

camps with the regulation food parcels as well as others 
where American prisoners were held. 

The process of locating prisoners and providing for their 
comfort was thoroughly systematized. Immediately on 
receipt of the German lists the Central Prisoners of War 
Committee in Berne wired them to General Headquarters of 
the American Expeditionary Force in France, which in turn 
cabled them to Red Cross Headquarters in Washington. 
Food packages were immediately dispatched, every item of 
which was accounted for on the receipt card. Shoes, hats, 
and clothing could be ordered. Officers' uniforms were made 
to measure in Berne from cloth stored there for the purpose, 
and the rank insignia accompanied them when shipped. 
The Red Cross notified a prisoner's relatives of his capture, 
and letters could be sent either direct or through the central 
bureau at Berne. 

The prompt provision of clothing is important, since a 
man captured in battle is apt to be pretty badly disarranged 
before he is taken. Individual packages shipped by friends 
and relatives at home were also forwarded, as well as money 
remittances. The practice of sending food and clothing 
from America had been discouraged, but there is a human 
side to it which was considered in the framing of the program 
and its regulations. With customary Teutonic caution, the 
German authorities paid over moneys sent to the prisoners 
not in German currency but in prison script, which was good 
at the prison-camp canteens but outside of which would pur- 
chase nothing. From the communications received from 
American prisoners it was indicated that the cruelties of the 
early years, reported to have been permitted and even 
encouraged in the Austro-German camps, were not practiced 
so largely in the treatment of American captives. 



CHAPTER XV 

BELGIUM 

Belgian Refugees in Other Countries — Work in Belgium, a Department 
of the French Commission — Housing Problem — Coordination of 
Scattered Relief Agencies — The Plight of the Belgian Army — 
Recreation and Eating Hut Provided by the Red Cross — Canteen 
and Other Comforts for the Soldiers — The Red Cross Supplemented 
the Work of the Belgian Government — Plans for a Possible Catas- 
trophe — Barrack Houses Erected — Work of Belgium's Queen — 
Private Enterprises of Relief — Colonies Scolaires. 

IT is one of the psychological phenomena of the war that 
the longest mark in the Belgian's score against his as- 
sailant is that the villain, not content with destroying his 
agriculture, also took away all the industrial machinery of 
the busy Belgian cities to his own shops across the Rhine. 
That one item of vandalism left in the Belgian soul a scar 
that time cannot obliterate. 

By ill fortune Belgium was the first horrible example 
which Germany depended on to awe the rest of Europe into 
submission. The brutality of the blow, deUvered when 
German strength, long held in check, was at its bestial 
maximum, staggered civilization. When the first numbing 
impact was past, Belgium struggled to her feet. If, in her 
agony, however, she was an object for pity, in the longer 
and more trying struggle for self-maintenance she gained 
universal admiration. A helpless and vicarious sacrifice 
to humanity's salvation, she rose from her altar a giant in 
courage and a model for faint hearts the world around. 

And so although Belgium ran the whole gamut of suffer- 
o 193 



194 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

ing from the first hour of war down to the present minute, 
and although she still suffers, her stalwart courage and con- 
spicuous practicality, her sturdy sense and simple dignity 
have long since lifted her above the lime-light zone of hys- 
terical pity. 

In September, 1917, however, there were 275,000 Belgian 
refugees in France ; 150,000 in England ; 50,000 in Holland ; 
and many thousands more in Switzerland. It was estimated 
that in free Belgium, — the 500 or less square miles which 
still remained free from invasion, though all within easy 
reach of the German lines had been swept every day and 
hour by missiles from the German guns, — there were 
90,000 more stubborn ones to whom the soil of home was 
dearer than life. There were fewer than 250,000 left of 
the Army, who had gathered about the stalwart figure of 
the King and settled down in the trenches of the coast sectors 
in a grim determination to see it through. 

The rest of the teeming population, which had made 
Belgium the leader of the world in productive agriculture, 
and, for her size, foremost as well in industrial output, Ger- 
many or the grave had swallowed them all. Belgium had 
nothing save what she could borrow — no land, no industries, 
no food, and no clothing. She was down, helpless, stripped, 
and with Winter not far away. 

Into this situation came the Red Cross, in the person of 
a deputy dispatched by the Conmiissioner for Europe to 
visit what was left of Belgium along the British front. 
''This strip," the deputy wrote back, ''is only about thirty- 
five miles long and fifteen miles wide and there is no foot of 
it that cannot be reached by German shells or air bombs.'' 

Of the 90,000 people still clinging to this target that they 
called home, more than 10,000 were children, and from this 
district the Belgian government, circumscribed as it was, 
had already taken away six thousand imperiled children 
and placed them in homes in Switzerland and France, viz. 



BELGIUM 195 

in Paris and in the Colonies Scolaires north of Paris, and 
others in the departments along the coast of the English 
Channel. At this time, however, burdened as they were 
with a multiplicity of problems, they had come to the van- 
ishing point of their resources ; so they asked if the Ameri- 
can Red Cross would not help to remove and furnish shelter 
for some six hundred more who were in the area of greater 
danger. 

The world has never seen a more pathetic lot than were 
those children! For *^ coolness under fire,'' as the phrase 
runs, connnend me now and evermore to those little children 
in the lost corner of Belgium who, day by day, they tell me, 
went trudging fearlessly and cheerfully from shell-shattered 
homes to half-ruined schoolhouses, along roads where the 
deep shell holes yawned like giants' graves! In all the 
great panorama of danger and desperation and death that 
made up the battlefront, I venture to say there were no 
stouter hearts than these. To mark their unconcern, as 
the missiles came and went, was to understand a httle more 
of the spirit that kept their fathers on the firing line through 
four years of hardship and misery, and their mothers guard- 
ing the home fires and holding the families together as best 
they could, with hideous death forever at their elbows. 
These toddlers had seen their mothers, fathers, brothers, and 
sisters blotted from the earth beside them in a whirl of sand 
and not gone mad. They were the soul of Belgium ! 

At first, the Red Cross work in Belgium was organized 
as a department of the French Commission ; but later, as it 
expanded, there was established a separate commission 
with headquarters at Havre. And when once the start was 
made in Belgium the labor did not lag. The territory that 
remained accessible, of what was Belgium, was so small as 
to be easily canvassed and planned for; only the refugee 
problem was distributed over a large area. But in it all 
the work was simplified, first by the keen organizing sense 



196 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

and the intense devotion of the leading people, both men 
and women, among the Belgians, and second by the habitual 
industry of the working folk. It was speedily found that 
a great number of these were nearly or almost self-supporting. 
After the Belgian fashion they had sought service at the 
trades in which they were skilled. The Flemish refugees 
from Belgium in the year 1917 tilled 60,000 acres of land 
in France, and helped to feed the Belgian Army at the front. 
The Red Cross and the Belgian organizations made system- 
atic effort to place the refugees; and lace makers, jewelers, 
machinists, and men and women proficient in many lines 
were soon permanently and profitably established. Most 
of them, to be sure, were old, but a Belgian is seldom too 
old to work. When he is he dies. The French govern- 
ment, likewise, with all the multitudinous loads of its own 
to carry, was giving to a great many of these Belgian wander- 
ers a small allocation or allowance to guard them against 
want. 

A most perplexing need, however, was for living quarters 
for the refugees. Naturally, in the cities of France, — Paris 
and Havre, — to which most of the refugees made their way, 
no proper provision had been or could be made to care for 
such a horde and under such stress of circumstances ; as 
a result, respectable Belgian families were compelled to take 
lodgment in the lowest quarters of the city, sometimes in 
wretched old houses, sometimes in sheds or outbuildings 
where there were no conveniences, no comfort, and no sani- 
tary safety. 

When the Red Cross first came to Belgium, it entered 
into close and practical cooperation with the government 
officials and, together, they attacked at once the trouble- 
some housing problem. In Havre, — where the population 
had increased by sixty thousand and never a new house 
had been built, — the situation was most acute. Here the 
Red Cross and the Belgians took over and equipped a group 



BELGIUM 197 

of vacant barracks and also leased a number of apartment 
houses, thus providing shelter for several hundred families. 
With the Famille Beige the Red Cross organized a chain of 
cooperative stores, such as are in vogue in Belgium, and 
cut down the high cost of living to the refugee families. 

To assist in maintaining the health of the Havre colony 
a 250-bed hospital was presented to it, which was managed 
by the Minister of the Interior and included in its personnel 
the Red Cross staff of doctors and nurses. Health centers 
were established at Havre and Rouen with infant clinics and 
pouponnieres for the care of abandoned babies. The opera- 
tion of these shelters was taken in charge by a group of 
prominent Belgian women. 

Here, as in France and Italy, it was the aim of the Red 
Cross in all its work of relief to coordinate by means of 
needed assistance, monetary or otherwise, all the scattered 
agencies and enterprises that were trying to cope with the 
situation, organizing them all into sections under the direc- 
tion of a government official. There was a host of them, too, 
for clothing, for layettes, for the famihes of Belgian soldiers, 
for emergency relief, for mothers and children, for housing, 
for hospital service, and for tuberculosis. By means of 
monthly conferences with delegates from each section, how- 
ever, all the work was correlated and widely extended, and 
cooperation was maintained through a system of weekly 
inspection with all governmental and private agencies of 
relief, both French and Belgian. 

Meanwhile, the refugee problem was never quiescent: 
always the stream of the newly homeless kept drifting down 
the long road from the zone of war. To relieve the situation 
in Havre the Red Cross gave $600,000 for the construction 
of a village of temporary cottages. The site was prepared 
by the Albert Fund, with paved streets, water supply, and 
electric lights. Each of the hundred cottages soon boasted 
a laundry-shed at the rear and a garden neatly fenced in. 



198 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

There were two schoolhouses with Belgian teachers, a 
church with a Belgian priest, and the inevitable cooperative 
store, without which the Belgian would not feel at home 
even in Brussels. There was also a town-hall for meetings 
and administration use. The rents were nominal. As a 
matter of fact the whole project was characteristically 
Belgian. 

After its entrance into Belgium, the first important con- 
tribution of the Red Cross was 500,000 francs to the Belgian 
Red Cross toward its great mihtary hospital at Wulvering- 
hem. La Panne, which had been the hospital center, had 
become a barrack town; and the great hotel where the 
hospital was installed was a pet-mark for the German 
gunners and air-men. At Wulveringhem the work on the 
splendid new hospital with its wide range of barrack wards 
was lagging for lack of means, but the Red Cross gift hurried 
it to usefulness. When it was finished the plant and the 
patients from La Panne were moved there and, once more, 
the Belgian Army doctors could operate without the per- 
petual interference of German shells. 

It was a needy army, in those days, that Belgian Army 
which helped the English to hold the Channel front, and it 
lived the life of a hunted animal ! There were the abris 
and dugouts in the first line, wet and overcrowded ; on the 
second line, about seven or eight miles back, some shelters 
and ruined buildings ; and in the rear some new brick barracks 
where at intervals good Belgian soldiers went when they 
did not die. When they did die — and their casualty roll 
mounted into the thousands each month — there was the 
endless graveyard near at hand. It was a somber place, all 
in all. ^^It is not the bombs that we are afraid of,'' said a 
Belgian soldier, who had once been an attache of the Rocke- 
feller Foundation, — '4t is not the bombs, or even the shell 
when they have the location of our quarters ; it is the bitter 
cold and the wet feet, and no place to go." 



BELGIUM 199 

Indeed, they had no place to go. All the way by Merck- 
hem and Bixschoote and up to the edge of the Houthulst 
forest trench lines were blotted out ; in their mad plunges 
for the mastery of the Channel coast the Germans had torn 
the whole land to tatters. The entire front was a wilder- 
ness of shell-holes, cratered and furrowed to the limit of 
desolation! The defenses were not lines at all — merely 
advance posts, machine-gun emplacements and batteries, 
and always under fire. In the second line retreats there 
were no lights of any nature. In the tumbledown barns 
the soldiers on repose slept on soggy straw, or ran back and 
forth all night to keep warm^ because of the lack of blankets. 
Many a Belgian hero took his '^day off'' sleeping in a pig- 
sty; and where there was a stove the men were brought 
in to get warm beside it in detachments. 

It became evident, therefore, that the Red Cross must do 
something towards removing this situation. A million francs 
was appropriated ; and together with the Belgian Minister of 
War, and other Belgian representatives, a project was set 
on foot for the erection in the Army zone of recreation and 
eating huts and of double tents, equipping them with dishes, 
baths, moving pictures, and reading rooms. The men them- 
selves undertook to manufacture the furniture. 

In addition, the Red Cross gave a fund to the Livres des 
Soldats Beiges, which sent out books to soldiers in the field. 
There was a great demand for technical books of the pro- 
fessions by soldiers who had left engineering and law offices 
and scientific schools to take their places against the invader 
and who did not wish to die intellectually. All these de- 
mands the Red Cross supplied. It contributed to societies 
whose object it was to furnish small comforts to the soldiers ; 
it helped in the expansion of the canteen system ; and it gave 
money for the erection and equipment of new canteens. 
It also gave money liberaUy to the Foyer du Soldat Beige — 
and if there ever was a soldat who was entitled to a Foyer 



200 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

it surely was the soldat Beige. There were thousands of 
them who had not known a day away from the cheerless 
expanse of mud and shell-holes and ice since the war began, 
for the very simple reason that they had no place in 
the world to go nor a sou to take them anywhere. In 
the Army, where the wages of the soldiers ran as low as 
seven cents a day, where the baths were few and far be- 
tween, and the clothing dilapidated, one did not travel for 
pleasure. So, when the Red Cross took detachments 
of these poor fellows and cleaned them up and with money 
in their pockets to spend sent them for a ten days' stay 
in Paris for a look at the bright lights and a change of diet, 
it brought these men back to a realization that there were 
still people in the world who were not dirty and unshorn, 
unshaven and scarred, and it made a distinct contribution 
to the cause of democracy. 

There was a Red Cross canteen at the Gare du Nord which 
had been supported by English donors, and which the Red 
Cross helped to enlarge and supply. This was for Belgian 
soldiers coming to Paris, or passing through, and it did any- 
thing and everything to make them comfortable. The Red 
Cross also made substantial contributions to the Conge du 
Soldat Beige, which had been supported by the Belgian, 
French, and Italian trades unionists. The Conge was differ- 
ent : its plan was to take a small number of the Belgian 
soldiers and treat them like country cousins who had come 
on a visit. The old number was ten at a time. The Red 
Cross increased it to fifty or more. 

But for the most part, as I have said, the ^4eave" of the 
Belgian soldier was not burdensome to his hosts. As soon 
as he was cleaned up and well fed he went out and got his 
pay check, which there was no trouble about his doing, and 
when he went back to his dugout he had money in his pocket. 
The Belgian Minister of Agriculture supplied employment 
for a multitude of the Flemish farmers on leave. The Red 



BELGIUM 201 

Cross started a fund for wounded men who, on account of 
their injuries, had been released from the Army, to pro- 
vide them with civiUan clothing to take the place of the 
uniforms — which they must surrender when discharged — 
and to help them make a fresh start. 

Altogether, there were half a dozen hospitals in Belgium 
and three in France accommodating about 5000 persons, 
which the Red Cross assisted. It contributed to a mess at 
Sainte Adresse, near Havre, which supplied 300 meals a 
day to workers in munition factories; it furnished money 
to the soldiers' club at Fecamp, and another at Dieppe; 
and a great deal of work was done at Calais in connection 
with the School of Gunnery. For the canteens and barracks 
for permissionaires at Ouvre, He de Cezambre, La Panne, 
Isenberghe, Bulscamp, Hoogstaade, Hondschoote, and other 
places, maintenance funds were provided. Libraries, games, 
and moving pictures were furnished to keep the soldiers 
cheerful and mentally fit. The library equipment was 
extensive. Actors and singers were secured to give enter- 
tainments. A valuable work was done in the support of 
educational courses, in which thousands of students were 
enrolled; individual gifts were distributed to all soldiers 
who were decorated or cited in Army orders for bravery. 

In all these undertakings — the providing of comfort 
for the soldiers at the front, recreation for soldiers on leave, 
hospitals, hospital equipment, medicines, instruments, look- 
ing after the families of soldiers and stiffening all along the 
line the Belgian military morale — the Red Cross was help- 
ing a government which had only a temporary abiding place, 
and was carrying on national business under a tremendous 
burden of difficulty. But throughout all the Red Cross 
work in Belgium it held merely the position of a contributor. 
The Belgian government had a thoroughly competent system 
for the handling of its problems; what it lacked was the 
means to carry its plans into execution. This the Red 



202 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

Cross furnished. It was a very vital contribution, for not 
only did it lighten the load of an overtaxed governmental 
machine, but it put new life into the Army of 200,000 men. 

In planning its work for the territory back of the lines, 
the Red Cross had a more perplexing problem, which resolved 
itself into a species of speculation on the fortunes of war. 
There had been no moment since the line adjusted itself 
in the north that was free from the possibility of swift and 
imperative demand. Any day some change in conditions 
along those northern sectors, held jointly by English, French, 
and Belgian troops, might send a final stream of refugees 
rolling down into France, calling for shelter and for instant 
supplies of food and clothing; or, a German retreat might 
release new areas whose inhabitants wretched after long 
periods of German rule would create an even more stringent 
condition. There would be a great and instant tax on the 
Army supplies, the Red Cross stores and the foodstuffs 
gathered for the remaining occupants of free Belgium. 
With an impossible condition of transportation and a 
paucity of food to begin with, it was plain that any diversion 
in the Belgian sector of the front would make trouble, and 
failure to meet it would be fatal. 

It was here perhaps that the Red Cross performed its 
most important task in the Belgian field, although the crisis 
which it was devised to meet never arrived. In the fall of 
1917, twenty barrack-houses, each twenty by one hundred 
feet, were contracted for near Adinkerke. Nine of them 
were first erected by Army labor on sites convenient to rail- 
way lines, highways, and canals, in order to provide prompt 
distribution. Arrangements were made with the Friends' 
Ambulance Unit and the British Red Cross for the use of 
their trucks in case of need. In addition, Paris Red Cross 
Headquarters agreed to place from twenty-five to fifty 
loaded cars in the Belgian region on demand, within twenty- 
four hours. Canal boats were placed under charter, in 



BELGIUM 203 

order to make use of the network of canals running all 

through the districts. With these provisions made, the 

Red Cross Commission set about the purchase of $2,000,000 

worth of emergency supphes, such as food, clothing, blankets, 

to supplement the great stocks in the Red Cross warehouses 

in Paris, which could be drawn upon at short notice. 

An idea of the natxu-e of the food supphes laid up in these 

warehouses against the day of need may be got from this 

list of goods shipped in for the first of the buildings that 

was completed : — 

500 cases condensed milk 
310 sacks of rice (50 kilos) 

40 sacks of rice (100 kilos) 
7 sacks of macaroni (100 kilos) 

60 sacks of dried peas (100 kilos) 
190 sacks of lentils (100 kilos) 
914 cases of salmon (50 lb. to case) 
913 cases of corned beef (50 lb. to case) 
120 sacks white beans (100 kilos) 
600 boxes biscuits (4| lb. each) 

All this was simply a gamble on the chances of war, an 
insurance against the horrible possibilities which the lack 
of these supplies might cause. What happened in Italy, 
what happened in Belgium itself at the beginning of the 
war might easily be repeated, and in the depleted condition 
of the country after four years of war the possibilities were 
awful to contemplate. 

^^The danger from the beginning has been recognized," 
observed the Red Cross Commissioner at that time, ''and 
we have resolved to take no chances. We prefer to lose 
part of our goods rather than to be caught napping. We 
realize that none of this food put in the warehouse at the 
front may ever be needed, that the lines may not change, 
and there is a possibility, even, of their changing in the 
wrong direction. But if the lines should change both rail- 
road and highways will be filled and there will be delay in 



204 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

getting food up there from Paris. There have been pro- 
tests against putting the food there on account of the danger 
of its being shelled. A high officer of the British Army- 
told me that he had been in command of troops which took 
possession of a sector of French territory, and that if his 
soldiers had not been double-rationed the civiUans would 
have starved to death before any help could have reached 
them. The world will never forgive/^ he emphasized, 
^'the American Red Cross if it does not run the risk of losing 
some property for the sake of saving Hves." 

It was wonderful tenacity that the Belgian folk displayed 
in cHnging to this vestige of land called '^free Belgium.'' 
Their infatuation for home soil stands out as the most 
graphic feature of the war situation in Belgium. After 
the fighting around Nieuport in the spring of 1917, and the 
stubborn battle for Paeschendaele Ridge in the fall, this 
country became not only an armed camp but a battle 
ground wherein these peasants went about their homely 
tasks with their fives eternally at hazard. Many of them 
paid the last price, but that did not frighten away their 
neighbors ; and the Belgian government, knowing its own 
people, encouraged them to stay on. They farmed away 
in utter disregard of German marksmanship, of danger and 
of horrible death, and in the words of an American writer who 
visited the section, ^Hheir ditches and hop-poles and stacked 
wheat, quite beyond the needed crops for which they stand, 
are so many markers of Belgium's claim to her own. ..." 
Some of the most serious fighting of the war has been carried 
on here, from shell crater to shell crater. But to the civilian 
Belgian these stretches of ground and the civifian country 
that lies between them and the sea are alike and the same. 
They are his native soil. They are free Belgium, heritage 
of the past and earnest of the future. 

At this time the Red Cross came in touch with the 
splendid work done by Belgian's Queen, who, as all the 



BELGIUM 205 

world knows, was an indefatigable worker for the children 
and the aged, and who lived in such constant peril and 
distress. La Panne, where the hospital had been, was 
at first the center for relief operations, but when the 
vicious attacks of 1917 began to make it untenable, the 
refugees there had to be gotten out and away to safer 
places. At first out of one hundred and eighty old men 
and women in the Repos d' Elizabeth, her Majesty's 
charity, only twenty-six answered yes when all were asked 
if they wanted to be taken out of danger. But when the 
houses all around them began going there was no longer 
any room for home love, and the Red Cross furnished the 
money to transport the whole company to a comfortable 
and safe place in France. Gradually the Society joined in, 
more or less as a silent partner, with all the organized forces 
of rehef in the district. It gave money to the commissaries 
of the arrondissements and to the Service de Sante conducted 
by EngUsh and French women. Clothing and milk were 
supplied for the babies, of which, in Belgium, even in normal 
times, there are plenty ; a portable barrack was found for a 
baby hospital at La Panne, and a Red Cross woman was 
gent from America for the clinical work. In areas where 
it was impossible to buy milk the Red Cross furnished it ; 
it also bought supplies of eggs for tubercular patients. 

In all the story of the war's miseries there are probably 
no more pathetic chapters than those of some of the private 
enterprises of reUef in Belgium. In the heart of the British 
war zone the Countess Van Steen, herself a nurse, had a 
hospital. Her home, which she had in the beginning turned 
into a hospital, fell into German hands and, Hke a soldier, 
she withdrew and began work in free Belgium where she 
was made directress of the Elizabeth Hospital at Poperingue. 
Again the bombardment forced retirement, and in the next 
station at Proven the shells were still falling all about her 
and the highways resounded to all the clamors of war. On 



206 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

every hand the rough mihtary buildings sprang up. To her 
little station there was always a procession of wounded, 
soldiers and civilians alike — wounded horribly. There 
were children, sick and injured and blinded with gas. The 
record of horrors in that neighborhood is not pleasant read- 
ing. In one evening twenty-eight cases were brought in 
from one little neighboring village. The wards, the tents, 
were all full, always full, and the means were very scanty. 
Then the Red Cross came and supplied what was lacking, 
and the work went on without hindrance. 

It was so with the Colonies of the Belgian Abbe Delaere 
at Wisques and Wizernes, which had grown out of an earlier 
work at Ypres. The Abbe Delaere had been the last of 
civilians to leave Ypres. There were others of these 
Colonies Scolaires, too, — nearly sixty of them, — scattered 
all over northern France in all sorts of available buildings, 
filled with thin-faced children brought from places within 
range of the never silent cannon, broken in nerves and full 
of fear. To all these schools the Red Cross made gifts, 
supplying everything from buildings to buttons. The 
Queen's school at Vinckem was a thriving establishment, 
with playgrounds, infirmary, and splendid gardens. But 
it was well in the danger zone, for the King and Queen re- 
fused to leave the soil of the Kingdom, and to be in Belgium 
meant to be under fire. The Red Cross assisted the Queen 
to expand the school's facilities by the erection of a babies' 
pavilion so as to take in younger children; it estabUshed 
school buildings at Cayeux-sur-Mer in France to accom- 
modate children from the abandoned estabhshments until 
the new permanent institutions could be completed at 
Leysele on the French frontier; and it transferred whole 
colonies of children, at the suggestion of the Queen, through 
Switzerland to many retreats in France. Victory, indeed, 
found the Red Cross more than a helper in things Belgian, 
— it found it a friend. 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE STORY OF ITALY 

The Red Cross Uniform in Italy — The Disaster of Caporetto — Emer- 
gency Commission from France — Refutation of Propaganda to 
Discredit America — Cooperation with Itahan Authorities — Ar- 
rival of the Permanent Red Cross Commission — Ambulance Sec- 
tions at the Front — Rolling Kitchens — Aiding Soldiers' Families — 
First Anniversary of America's Entering the War — Epidemic of 
Influenza — Aid for American Soldiers — Establishment of the Red 
Cross Hospital — Red Cross Welcome to Our Soldiers — Forward 
with the Victorious Army — Care for the Starving Civilian Popula- 
tion — The Problem of Italian Prisoners of War — Opening of the 
Department of Tuberculosis — Activities Turned Over to Itahan 
Authorities. 

THE many millions of Americans, whose support made 
possible the work of the Red Cross abroad, can have 
no adequate conception of what the presence of Americans 
of the Red Cross, in the uniform of their country, meant to 
the people of Italy in the fall of 1917, and the year following. 

It was not until July, 1918, that American fighting troops 
were sent to Italy. Then one regiment was dispatched 
from France, receiving a welcome that will never be for- 
gotten. They had been preceded in the last week of June 
by about 1600 officers and men of the United States Army 
Ambulance Service, but before that time the only uniformed 
American force in Italy had been a few student aviators at 
training camps and the personnel of the Red Cross. 

It came about, therefore, that at a critical period in 
Italy's history and in the progress of the war, workers of 
the Red Cross, conducting their work from one end of Italy 

207 



208 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

to the other, from the front lines to the tip of Sicily, brought 
to hundreds of thousands of Italian soldiers and to millions 
of Italian people in civil life their first sight of an American 
in the uniform of his native land. 

The American Red Cross came to Italy just three weeks 
after the disaster of Caporetto, when thousands had been 
slain, hundreds of thousands taken prisoners, vast quantities 
of munitions captured, and a half million or more old men, 
women, and children had been driven from their homes by 
the invading enemy. Such a disaster has had few parallels 
in history and it is, perhaps, the greatest tribute possible 
to the power of resistance of Italy's people and the courage 
of her soldiers that on the slender stream of the Piave, — 
almost negligible as a military barrier, — her retreating 
troops reformed and repulsed a numerically superior foe, 
advancing with all the elan that a great victory gives; 
while behind the lines the people of Italy, who had suffered 
the hardships of war for two years, rallied to the support 
of her heroic Army, and stood firm. 

It was into these darkest days of the war in Italy — when 
no one knew how long the Piave line could hold and no one 
could tell when the burden placed upon the people would 
become greater than they could bear — that the Red Cross 
found its greatest opportunity for service there. Upon 
a telegraphic request from our Ambassador in Rome, an 
Emergency Commission was sent from France, and Italy 
had her first widespread opportunity of welcoming officers 
and men in the uniform of the United States Army. The 
Red Cross men appeared as the first visible evidence of the 
sincerity of America's pledge that she would devote every 
man and every resource to winning the war. German 
propaganda had been extremely active in Italy ; one of 
its endeavors had been to discredit America's sincerity by 
the assertion that the United States was growing rich out 
of the war, that she was willing to prolong it by supplying 




^^st^^-^Mkk: 






THE STORY OF ITALY 209 

the Allies with money and munitions but that she would 
never send her men. The men and women of the American 
Red Cross in Italy served as living refutations of that 
German lie ; moreover, it soon became known to the 
Italians that these men and women were not merely the 
advance guard but that they had come to Italy as volun- 
teers, leaving behind homes and positions in order to share 
the lot of the Italians and side by side work with them in 
the great common cause. Everywhere that I went in Italy, 
I heard from the Itahans, from their statesmen, and from 
their women and little children, expressions of gratitude, 
friendship, and admiration for the spirit of the American 
people, as represented by these workers in the Red Cross, 
who came to them first in their hour of greatest suffering. 

The immediate problem to be dealt with was the feeding 
and housing of the hundreds of thousands of refugees from 
the invaded districts. Few nations in modern history have 
been called upon to face a more serious problem than that 
with which Italy was confronted : from the two northern- 
most provinces the civilian population had come in a great 
flood that overflowed the roads and swept on over the 
fields toward the south ; the barrier of steel which had held 
back the Austrian and German troops at the border had 
given way without warning, and women and children and 
old men, knowing only too well the cruelty of their foes, 
had left everything they possessed in an effort to escape. 
Women trudged along with children in their arms; the 
bedridden were carried in wheelbarrows and on stretchers. 
Fleeing civilians were inextricably mixed in with the retreat- 
ing soldiery : abandoned guns, trucks, ammunition wagons, 
ambulances, and automobiles clogged the roads. Daugh- 
ters were separated from mothers ; little children were swept 
away from their parents — some of them to be united 
months later in American Red Cross homes, others never 
to be together again. Women trudging along barefoot in 



210 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

nightdresses; many walked until they fell, weak with 
hunger. In the midst of this great military disaster and 
the future of the Kingdom at stake, Italy, already suffering 
from privations, with every resource strained for the trans- 
portation of fresh supplies of munitions to her troops, was 
thus called upon to transport a civilian army of half a 
million or more souls, to find new homes for them, to feed 
them immediately, and to supply them with clothing and 
food for their journeys to other already burdened localities. 

The way in which she met the problem and solved it won 
the admiration of every American in the Red Cross who 
saw the conditions at close range. The American Red 
Cross cooperated with the Italian authorities and Italian 
Relief Societies, bringing carloads of foodstuffs and clothing 
from our storehouses in France, buying other necessaries 
in the open market, distributing food to the refugees in 
trains who journeyed often for days, establishing homes 
and, as the destitute homeless women reached the desti- 
nations assigned to them, providing work for them that 
would occupy their time and afford a small remuneration. 
Asylums were opened for the children where these war 
orphans could be taught, fed, and clothed. Soup kitchens 
were inaugurated to give simple, sustaining food to those 
who, still laboring under the influence of that nightmare 
of panic-stricken flight, were trying to adjust themselves 
to their new environment. In this practical way the Red 
Cross went about its mission of relieving the wounds that 
war had caused to innocent women and children. The 
Italians accepted it as an earnest pledge of America to 
share a part of the great war's burden, and the morale of the 
people was strengthened as the morale of any one who is 
suffering is strengthened by the presence of a friend. 

Adding to the mental distress induced by her reverses 
and to the physical deprivation consequent upon the loss 
of two rich provinces, the winter of 1917-1918 fell upon Italy 



THE STORY OF ITALY 211 

with unusual severity. There was snow in the streets of 
Rome and on the mountains, and in the plains the soldiers 
suffered from the intense, penetrating cold. It was a fore- 
gone conclusion that when the weather permitted in the 
spring the Austrians would resume their drive, for all 
through that dismal winter the invaders boasted con- 
fidently to the unhappy inhabitants left behind in the 
conquered district that they would go on to Rome before 
the trees were green again. The forces of the Austrians 
were numerically superior by twenty-three divisions 
and military commanders awaited with anxiety that 
threatened attack. Would their soldiers, their morale 
inevitably weakened by a great defeat, be able to hold the 
Piave and the mountain passes, or would the enemy break 
through and invade the Lombardy plains? No human 
intelligence could answer those questions; and yet upon 
the answer Italy's fate depended. 

These were the conditions in Italy when the permanent 
Red Cross Commission arrived. Immediately, ener- 
getically, devotedly, they took up the work begun by the 
Emergency Commission, extending it until it had reached 
all parts of Italy — all of which was accomplished in 
almost an incredibly brief time. There is a map, repro- 
duced on another page, showing graphically by means of 
dots and symbols the extent and variety of the work in 
Italy. A large majority of dots and symbols were placed 
upon the map in the three or four active months after 
the arrival of the Permanent Commission when every 
hour was filled with the work of organization and of actual 
relief. 

Multiform as were the activities and urgent as was the 
need for haste, — for with the enemy threatening always 
in the north not a moment was to be lost, — a clear, con- 
sistent purpose ran through it all. Everything that was 
done became the expression of the spirit of the American 



212 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

people in their consecration to the common cause for which 
Italy had suffered. To Italians, whose deep love for their 
children is a national characteristic, the American Red 
Cross became in a very real sense the great mother. Many 
thousands of children whose fathers were fighting for liberty 
were taken under the shelter of the American Red Cross 
schools, homes, and day nurseries. Nearly all of these 
children were suffering from undernourishment, the slow 
starvation that renders the young an easy prey to disease. 
They were supplied with milk and wholesome food from 
America. Some of the older girls were taught lace making ; 
the boys were taught the rudiments of carpentry and shoe- 
making. To mothers, whose husbands or sons were soldiers, 
the opportunity was afforded to supplement their meager 
pensions by work in shops where garments were made out 
of cloth from America, and these garments, together with 
the contents of the Chapter boxes that came in great quan- 
tities from the United States, were used to clothe the chil- 
dren of the soldiers at the front. 

Those whom war had deprived of their natural means 
of support were enabled to become self-supporting by 
work that went toward the winning of the war, and the 
spirit on the part of Americans and Italians engaged in the 
work was the spirit of cooperation, of mutual helpfulness, 
of sympathetic understanding, and of fraternal friendship. 
Without the effective, complete, and cordial cooperation 
of the Italians, indeed, the work could not have achieved 
the measure of success which it did. 

The result of this widespread activity became evident 
very quickly in the changed spirit of the troops. In the 
records of the American Red Cross at Rome are many post- 
cards glowing with thanks from soldiers and letters from 
commanding officers, and in the minds of our men and 
women workers are the memories of innumerable spoken 
tributes, all eloquently indicative of the change which came 



THE STORY OF ITALY 213 

about in the morale of the Army, of its renewed hope and 
determination to resist, now that America had come to its 
support. 

There was much that was done, too, which affected the 
soldiers even more directly than this care of their families. 
Hospital supplies, drugs, medicines, surgical instruments, 
bandages, hospital furniture had been lost in vast quantities 
after the defeat of Caporetto, and it was almost impossible 
to replace them in Italy. 

Eed Cross Medical Warehouses were established in Rome 
and other centers, particularly in the war zone ; from these 
warehouses many Italian military and not a few civilian 
general hospitals were supplied with the things they lacked. 
In all between 1500 and 1800 hospitals were aided, many 
of them two and three times. 

In other ways less obviously urgent, perhaps, but having 
scarcely less effect upon the morale of the troops, the Red 
Cross came into close contact with the soldiers. Ambulance 
sections were established at the front with advanced posts 
near the lines. The ambulances were manned by young 
American volunteers, many of whom had seen service in 
France. These ambulances did effective work in transport- 
ing the occasional casualties and the many sick from the 
front lines and from distributing hospitals to base hospitals 
or evacuating base hospitals to the rail-heads. 

To bring some degree of comfort to the men in the stormy 
trenches of the Alps and the icy, mud-caked trenches along 
the Piave, the Red Cross established ^'Rolling Kitchens" 
where the soldiers returning from the trenches could always 
have hot coffee, jam for their dry bread, cigarettes, and the 
friendship and encouragement of the Americans in charge, 
and which, undoubtedly, counted far more than the food. 
There were a score or so of these posts, through which, it 
is said, a half million or more Italian soldiers passed in the 
course of a month. Men who had stood for hours in the cold 



214 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

under arms went away from these little kitchens where the 
Italian and American flags flew side by side, revived by the 
hot coffee and cheered by the greeting of a fellow soldier 
from another land. Of Lieutenant Edward McKey, who 
took out the first '^Rolling Kitchen" and who lost his life 
in the work, it has been said that to the Italian Divisions 
who held the key-positions of the Brenta passes, ''he was the 
entire American Army." 

From time to time, as the winter wore on, upon the occasion 
of a feast day such as Christmas or New Year's or upon 
days significant to Italian patriotism, gifts were made to the 
soldiers of packages containing useful articles, generally 
a cake of soap, warm socks, a cake of chocolate, and a pack- 
age of cigarettes, with post-cards bearing a symbol of the 
union of Italy and America in the cause of liberty. 

As the spring advanced every effort Vv^as made by the 
American Red Cross, always cooperating closely with the 
Italians, to carry the practical message of the American 
people to every soldier and to every city, town, and hamlet. 
During part of the months of March and April, American 
Red Cross agents, traveling in automobiles by day and 
night, actually visited more than two thousand towns and 
villages. They sought out the destitute or needy families 
of soldiers, families that lacked medicines or food or clothing, 
and supplied their wants immediately by leaving in the hands 
of duly constituted authorities sufficient funds to meet the 
local emergency. In this work the Red Cross had the 
efficient cooperation of departmental prefects, mayors, 
and community committees. The Italian Premier, Signor 
Orlando, advised the prefects of the coming of Red Cross 
representatives ; with the result that when our agents 
arrived they found the lists of the needy prepared and 
crowds of women and children waiting to receive this visit 
of men from America. Then, by means of speeches and 
of placards posted upon the walls, the purpose of the visit 



THE STORY OF ITALY 215 

was explained. In all more than 300,000 families were 
aided in this way in the short space of a month ; and from 
these 300,000 families word went at once to their men at 
the front that America was actually and actively in the 
war, for they had seen with their own eyes and had re- 
ceived with their own hands the pledge of America's faith. 

On the occasion of the first anniversary of America's 
entrance into the war with Germany, I was in Rome and 
was present at the impressive ceremony held in the Coliseum 
in honor of the day. No one could have doubted the 
sincerity of the words there spoken, words of gratitude on 
the part of Italy's representatives, addressed to the President 
and people of the United States and the American Red Cross ; 
nor could any one have failed to be touched by the spon- 
taneous applause from the soldiers and the men and 
women who, in a downpour of rain, stood in that great 
ruined open amphitheater to do honor to our country. 
Later, I went to other chief cities of Italy, and everywhere 
there were the same cordial, fervent demonstrations of 
friendship and appreciation. The message of America had 
been well carried to the Italian people. 

The Austrians had boasted, as I have said before, that 
they would be in Rome before the summer; but when in 
June they began their delayed offensive they found opposed 
to them men confident in victory. By weight of superior 
numbers they forced their way across the Piave in several 
places only to be beaten back with severe losses ; the passes 
of the Brenta and the Grappa had become walls of granite 
which they beat at in vain. The failure of that offensive 
marked the salvation of Italy. 

In the time of actual fighting the American Red Cross 
concentrated its forces in the war zone, aiding the hospitals 
with supplies to care for the increased demand upon them. 
Our rolling kitchens, supplemented in number, continued 
their work, and all our ambulances were in action, many of 



216 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

the men receiving the War Cross for their service under 
fire. 

During the summer the work of the Red Cross throughout 
Italy went on with unabated energy. The main attempt 
of the Austrians to break through was followed by a lull 
in the fighting, but another afiliction came upon the people 
of Italy: An epidemic of influenza or ^'Spanish fever'' of 
great severity ravaged the entire kingdom, claiming many 
victims. In helping to check the spread of this plague the 
American nurses of the Red Cross and our men did heroic 
service. Milk was greatly needed to nourish the victims 
of the disease and to fortify children against attack. So 
while the nurses were visiting stricken communities, making 
house to house visits, our men distributed large quantities 
of condensed milk received from America. In every way 
possible our organization cooperated with the Italian 
authorities in combating the epidemic, even though our 
hospitals were filled with patients from our Army and 
Navy, from our diplomatic corps, the Young Men's Christian 
Association, and our own personnel. 

With the arrival of American troops the work of the Red 
Cross in Italy took on another phase. The scope of this 
work was, necessarily, limited by the small number of 
American troops, but the Red Cross was able to do many 
comparatively small things, and stood ready at all times 
to meet any demand upon it by our few thousand soldiers 
actually in Italy, or by larger contingents, if they had been 
sent. In the summer the Army Ambulance Service that had 
been in camp at Allentown arrived in Genoa. The Red 
Cross at once undertook the establishment of a hospital, 
and in the short space of two weeks a suitable building was 
found near the encampment and equipped as a thoroughly 
modern hospital. Later this hospital was given by the Red 
Cross to our Navy for the use of our sailors and soldiers. 

A few weeks later when an American regiment of the 




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THE STORY OF ITALY 217 

line, the 332d, arrived in Italy from France, the Red Cross 
made om* soldiers welcome, provided coffee for them at the 
stations through which they passed on the long journey 
overland ; at the place of detraining in the war zone they 
were met with something hot to drink, something to smoke, 
and a temporary hospital. Likewise, when these men took 
their place in the line, Eed Cross Home Service men went 
with them, following them across the Piave in the victori- 
ous advance against the Austrians. 

The story of Italy's complete and brilHant victory over 
Austria in the closing days of October, and the rapid forward 
march into and beyond the reconquered, devastated districts, 
forms the culmination of the story of our Red Cross work 
in Italy. It was a victory upon which every hope had 
centered, toward which all of the long effort of Italy and 
those associated with her brave soldiers and her patient, 
enduring people had been devoted, but when it came it was 
so much greater than any reasonable anticipation could 
have foreseen, so much more complete and rapid, that its 
immediate effects were well-nigh overwhelming. 

After a stubborn resistance, the Austrian line in the 
mountains and on the plain broke, and then followed the 
utter rout of the enemy. Our ambulances and rolling 
kitchens with our officers and men swept forward with the 
Italian troops. It was difficult to keep up with the advance, 
so difficult, for instance, that our American regiment out- 
stripped its commissary and for three days practically 
subsisted, contented, happy, and victorious, on the light 
stores that the Red Cross with its more mobile trans- 
portation was able to bring up across the crowded pontoon 
bridges and over the shell-torn roads. 

In the year that the Austrian, German, and Hungarian 
troops had held the northern provinces of Italy, they had 
systematically despoiled the remaining inhabitants of their 
possessions. It had been a year of slow starvation for those 



218 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

who, unfortunately, had been unable to escape, with food 
growing more and more scarce. When the final rout came 
the enemy took all that was left. It became a case of gen- 
eral loot : shoes were taken from the feet of citizens ; women 
were robbed of their clothing; all of the supplies of food 
were commandeered, and what had been slow starvation 
changed to acute suffering and death from want of something 
to eat. 

The Italian Army of fifty-three divisions, the French 
and English with three divisions each, and the 332d American 
Regiment pursued the rapidly fleeing enemy. All the 
railroads were torn up and the bridges destroyed, so that 
all supplies had to pass through the narrow neck of the bottle 
represented by the temporary pontooii bridges over the 
Piave and then be transported by camion over roads which 
were choked with moving troops and guns — wretched 
roads neglected by the enemy and filled with pits from 
heavy artillery fire. There was small opportunity at that 
moment of vital military emergency for Italy to take care 
of the starving, shivering civilian population; and it is 
probably no exaggeration to say that the opportunity for 
service which then came to the American Red Cross was 
the greatest and most urgent it had during all its Italian 
experience. 

In some places the trucks of the American Red Cross 
laden with provisions entered a town within a few hours 
after the Austrians had quitted it; rarely did more than 
forty-eight hours elapse between the departure of the 
enemy and the establishment of a Red Cross center for 
distributing food — condensed milk, soups, beans, peas, 
sugar, and often, salted beef. Pitiful stories of cruelty, 
oppression, and long privation were told by these unfortunate 
people, day after day, as they stood in line before the Red 
Cross distributing stations, and many and fervent were 
the blessings upon America as they received the life-giving 







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THE STORY OF ITALY 219 

food from the hands of men and women in the uniform of 
the Red Cross. 

With the signing of the Armistice following upon Austria's 
utter defeat there was thrust upon Italy a new problem of 
large proportions — the problem of feeding, clothing, and 
transporting Italian prisoners of war released by the cessation 
of hostilities. Austria — anxious to be freed of the burden 
of their care — turned these men loose without direction, 
without system, and without preliminary arrangements. 
They came from prison camps by tens of thousands, making 
their way south, as best they could, on trains as far as the 
trains would go, then on foot by road and field and mountain 
pass, a hungry, half-clad, ragged army, weak from long 
confinement and insufficient food. Over the Alps and down 
upon Trieste at the head of the Adriatic and upon the 
devastated, suffering redeemed districts they poured, strag- 
gling into the cities and towns. 

The city of Trieste, which more than five hundred years 
before had fallen into Austrian hands but had remained, 
through many vicissitudes, Italian at heart and in speech, 
was the objective of many of these released prisoners. A 
few thousand came the first day, more the next day, and still 
more each succeeding day until, finally, they stood shoulder 
to shoulder a vast unorganized hungry army of many 
thousands, crowded into the only space where they could be 
put, — the pubHc shipping docks. At the time Trieste 
was cut off by railroad ; there were almost no ships available ; 
and the mere problem of feeding the liberated city, rejoicing 
in its new freedom, was taxing every resource without the 
added burden of this army of men who had suffered many 
hardships, who could not be moved, and whose number 
constantly increased. 

As fortune would have it, however, a Red Cross ''rolling 
kitchen" with two Americans had followed the troops from 
the Piave far to the east, and in the first hours of the Armis- 



220 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

tice pushed on through the Austrian lines and, skirting the 
sea, reached Trieste overland with a stock sufficient for, 
perhaps, 2000 rations of soup. These men at once took 
up their station in the concentration camp, and while one 
of them served the soup the other got on board a torpedo 
boat and went to Venice for more Red Cross supplies. Our 
Venice representative with a deputy commissioner from 
Rome arrived in Trieste the same day and made arrange- 
ments inamediately to cooperate with the military author- 
ities. From that time on until the men were reformed and 
disposed of, — a period of about one month, — the Red 
Cross, working always with the approbation of the Italian 
authorities and aided for a time by a committee of Trieste 
ladies, relieved the situation. By camion overland and by 
sea provisions were sent from our warehouse; other pro- 
visions were brought by the British Red Cross. Clothing 
was brought and the army of the repatriated, crowded, sick, 
and hungry, in that provisional concentration camp by the 
sea, began to emerge from its long nightmare of Austrian 
prison camps and to experience once more the joy of liberty 
and life among people of their own nation and its allies 
who, in spite of the urgent need among themselves, had the 
spirit and willingness to provide for these soldier sons of 
Italy who had come back home again in the hour of victory. 

In the reconquered districts, meanwhile, and in the land 
of Italia Redenta, upon which for centuries Italy had looked 
as provinces lost to her that would some day be restored, 
foodstuffs were supplied, hospitals refurnished, and the 
sick visited. The progress of events ever carrying the 
work into the towns of the Dalmatian Coast across the 
Adriatic. 

The work in all this newly opened territory, with normal 
means of transportation utterly lacking, gave to the Amer- 
ican Red Cross an opportunity to show again its effective- 
ness as an organization for emergency relief and, by the very 



THE STORY OF ITALY 221 

nature of its organization, the relief was forthcoming more 
quickly than could have been possible through the more 
complex governmental or military machinery. The result, 
seen so often in the war, was typical not alone of Red Cross 
activity in Italy, but in all countries. 

While attention was centered on the territories liberated 
by the victorious armies and while effort was concentrated 
there, the work went on throughout all Italy of caring for 
the women and children who were sufferers from the war. 
New activities were added. One entire new department be- 
gan its work during this period : the Department of Tuber- 
culosis, consisting of experts sent from America by the Red 
Cross to cooperate with the Italians in combating the rav- 
ages of the disease which, through conditions attributable 
directly to the war, has become of even greater menace. 

The cessation of hostilities brought about a change in 
Italy, as elsewhere in Red Cross work, as there wg.s no longer 
need for many of our military activities. Wherever pos- 
sible and advisable the activities of the Red Cross were 
turned over to the Italian authorities and to duly con- 
stituted Italian societies — a process made easy of fulfill- 
ment by reason of the close association in the work between 
Italians and Americans; moreover, nearly all of the chil- 
dren's institutions established by the Red Cross were 
being carried on by Italians, as wherever it was necessary, 
provision was made for these institutions during the period 
of adjustment. In all cases the American Red Cross ful- 
filled its obligations, express or implied ; and even though 
our personnel are to-day no longer on the ground mingling 
with those who had come to be their friends, nevertheless 
the spirit of the work is going on, providing a lasting bond 
between our two countries — a result in which not only 
the devoted workers of the Red Cross in Italy but every 
supporter of the Red Cross in America may, with just pride, 
claim his or her share. 



CHAPTER XVII 

GREAT BRITAIN 

Activity of the British Red Cross — The London Chapter — Com- 
mission to Great Britain — Tuscania Tragedy — Red Cross Sta- 
tions on the Irish Coast — Otranto Disaster — Work in Camps and 
along Lines of Communications — Hospital Work — Camp Service 
of America Transplanted to England — London Workrooms — 
London "Care Committee" — Communication Service — Multi- 
farious Duties — Library Committee — Grosvenor Gardens, a Center 
— ''Our Day" of the British Red Cross — Gift to the British Red 
Cross. 

HOWEVER much I may have taken advantage of the 
rather exceptional opportunities that I had of observ- 
ing the manifold sacrifices — be it financial, moral, or 
military — that Great Britain made to strengthen her sup- 
port of her Allies, my good friends the British would prefer, 
I know, that I should not enumerate them. But for all 
their modesty the soldiers of the American Army know what 
the British did in France ; the men of the American Navy 
know full well what the British did for us in the transpor- 
tation of our Armies and in the moving of our supplies ; and 
the Red Cross knows, as neither the Army and the Navy can 
know, how ungrudging was the measure of British achieve- 
ments in labors of Mercy at a time when her own resources 
in man-power and money were taxed to the breaking point. 
There was no scene of suffering, whether near by or distant, 
in Belgium or Baikalia, France or Mesopotamia, Italy or 
Palestine, wherein Great Britain did not bear the largest 
part of the burden of relief. From the early days of the 

222 



GREAT BRITAIN 223 

War the members of the British Red Cross, never ruffled 
or flurried, went about performing their difficult task in that 
unostentatious manner that is so characteristic of their 
race. And no matter whether the Americans pitched their 
tents along the northern shores of the White Sea or beside 
the southern waters of the Black Sea or anywhere else, 
they were sure to find that an encampment of the British 
Red Cross had preceded them. 

Whatever disagreements, to put it mildly, may have been 
fated to the two great English-speaking nations in the past, 
there can be no question that Great Britain, from the King to 
his last stout soldier, has been our close friend and good Ally 
all through the Armageddon that has now ended. Quite 
naturally, therefore, it was our appreciation of this friendship, 
together with the knowledge of the magnitude of the British 
efforts, that had so much to do with the spirit in which the 
work of the American Red Cross was begun in Great Britain. 
For some time British activities had enjoyed our intelligent 
help in England, not a few of our men having foreseen our 
eventual entry into the war. Indeed, it is a well-known 
fact that more or less definite plans were made for the estab- 
lishment of our work in England — chiefly through the 
organization of a London Chapter — before the declaration 
of war in April, 1917. So that when the tide of American 
soldiers began to flow through England, it was clear that 
we had in that country a great natural center for our work 
on behalf of our troops, even though it offered little protection 
against the bombing planes. And, in time, as we all know, 
this center became a great distribution depot for our men 
until we had established adequate facilities on the French 
coast. 

In October, 1917, the War Council appointed the Com- 
mission for Great Britain. Scarcely had it arrived at its 
post before its Commissioner made a large donation to the 
British Red Cross. It was nothing more than an act of 



224 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

civility, and the War Council proceeded to vote three more 
appropriations in rapid succession, amounting to $4,750,000, 
to enable the British Red Cross to expand its work still 
further. Nevertheless, it is not difficult to imagine that a 
people, who had given for one war purpose and another until 
giving was very hard, should have shown, as indeed they did, 
a lively appreciation of our gift. 

It was not long, however, before the wisdom of our promptly 
setting up the American Red Cross organization in England 
was made manifest when it was suddenly decided to brigade 
American troops with the English in Northern France. 
Thousands and tens of thousands of American soldiers 
thereafter went to England, and nobody at that time could 
foretell how many of those who reached France would be 
borne back on hospital ships to Dover and Folkestone and 
Southampton, — towns which, as every Englishman will 
tell you, had had more than their share of that sort of thing. 

In the midst of these preparations there suddenly came the 
news that the Tuscania had been sunk by a submarine, off 
the Irish Coast. No sooner had the first tidings of this 
disaster reached London than a little company of Red Cross 
men were rushed to the scene. In true American fashion 
they went strenuously to work, helping to equip the survivors, 
supplying money for needful things, talking with the men, 
and writing letters home for them; in short, doing every- 
thing that was necessary and helpful to relieve their anxieties 
until the last train-load had left the little Irish village. 
Obviously, since this was a new experience for us, most of 
the troops who came through safely were quartered at five 
British Military Camps in the North of Ireland, where all 
their needs for clothing and other things were supplied from 
the British Red Cross stores under an American Red Cross 
guarantee. Necessities were purchased wherever they could 
be obtained, and each man was not only fully supplied but 
had an extra bag of good things when he boarded the boat 



GREAT BRITAIN 225 

at Belfast to complete his journey to his camp in England. 
When it was learned that nearly all of the 107 officers on the 
Tuscania lost their outfits, the Red Cross at once advanced 
$17,000 to enable them to reequip. 

Nor must it be supposed that this disaster did not teach us 
anything; far from it. From that time on there were 
provisions at half a dozen Irish stations for six thousand 
men in case the submarines should score another hit off those 
difficult coasts. Arrangements were also made for prompt 
billeting of any number of men, and squads of Red Cross 
motor cars were kept in readiness for the transport of workers 
and emergency supplies. And that the American Red 
Cross had certainly taken time by the forelock in establish- 
ing these Irish Emergency Stations and preparing for every 
possible contingency — not only in Ireland but along the 
shores of England and Scotland — was soon shown by the 
terrible Otranto disaster that followed. It was after this 
tragedy that the Army gracefully acknowledged its obligation 
to the Red Cross through the Commander of the American 
Forces in Great Britain. ^^The first thing we did,'' said 
General Biddle, '^was to go to the Red Cross for material 
and supplies ... we in the army feel a gratitude to the 
Red Cross which is hard for me to express in words.'' And 
praise from the Army, to paraphrase the well-known saying, 
is praise indeed. 

But it must not be thought that the other departments 
were not at work in the camps and along the lines of communi- 
cation. Effort was concentrated in an attempt to bring an 
atmosphere of home into the life of every American soldier 
and, particularly, to surround the sick and wounded with it. 
The hospitals for American wounded had to have a thor- 
oughly American personnel, and the patients back from 
Northern France found themselves in the sympathetic 
hands of American doctors, surgeons, and nurses, to say 
nothing of the smiling Red Cross women ^^ Visitors," 

Q 



226 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

In regard to hospital work of the American Red Cross, it 
is necessary for me to go back to the time of the arrival of 
the Commission in England. This was, of course, work that 
would brook no delay and the Commission opened its first 
hospital within a few weeks at Mossley Hill, Liverpool. 
From the very first day of its installment there it was filled 
with Americans who had been taken ill on board the incoming 
transports. In more ways than one it was a distinct achieve- 
ment on the part of our people ; for otherwise our soldiers 
and sailors would have had to be taken to the British hos- 
pitals in the vicinity. 

Another hospital was early estabhshed at Paignton in 
sunny South Devon, which was taken over in January, 1918, 
from an American Committee which had established it as 
far back as 1914 for the use of British privates. Like many 
similar enterprises in England and France, this hospital was 
in danger of being discontinued from lack of funds. After 
assuming responsibility for it, we arranged to leave it to be 
used by British privates until it was needed for American 
soldiers a few months later. There was a similar institution 
at Lancaster gate in London for officers which was taken 
over with the same understanding. 

In this connection, it would be a mistake not to include St. 
Catherine's Lodge in London. This house had been given 
by an American for the duration of the war, together with a 
gift of fifty thousand dollars for equipment, and was occupied 
by British officers until the American began coming back 
from the hard fighting of the late summer. It was con- 
ducted in conjunction with the famous British Orthopedic 
hospital at Shephard's Bush. 

By all odds the most impressive American Red Cross hos- 
pital in England was located at Salisbury Court, not far 
from Southampton. It was opened with about 400 beds, 
but had facihties for about three thousand more. It was 
in the park of one of the most beautiful country estates in 



GREAT BRITAIN 227 

England, and had a mile of waterfront along the Hamble. 
Around the Manor House our Red Cross began building 
acres of hut wards, a separate isolation hospital, and large 
buildings for the medical and surgical staff. And, as often 
is the case in England, there were trees of the great-grand- 
father type on this 186-acre estate, and from which, by the 
way, much of the heavy timber was taken for the hospital 
buildings. Well might a wounded soldier feel that he had 
the best chance in the world of convalescing successfully in a 
hospital situated in the loveliest of the English picture coun- 
try, with boating, fishing, fresh milk and eggs, and the prod- 
ucts of a 10-acre vegetable garden to tempt him back to 
hunger and health ! 

In some ways, perhaps, the most pretentious of all the 
American institutions in England was the Naval hospital 
in Park Lane in London. Built by a South African dia- 
mond king, this big marble mansion occupied an entire 
block, and was used during the first years of the war as a 
hospital for British officers before it was taken over by the 
Red Cross to provide a place for the officers and men from 
our warships. 

Another London hospital was that in Kensington Palace 
Gardens, the former residence of an Indian prince; and a 
little way out of London was the magnificent Lingfield rest 
house for convalescent officers. It gives me pleasure to 
recall that among other kind thoughts on the part of the 
British Red Cross, it offered to build for us a model war 
hospital in the Royal Park at Richmond, which work of 
construction was just starting when the Armistice made its 
continuance unnecessary. In summing up I must not neg- 
lect to say that our Commission also established tent hos- 
pitals to accommodate men suffering from minor ailments 
in about fifty small American cantonments in England. 

While the needs of the sick and wounded were being thus 
provided for, another large section of Red Cross personnel 



228 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

in England was devoting its attention to the soldiers who 
were not ill. These were pouring into England by the 
thousand, shipload after shipload, in never ending streams. 
Needless to say these men had no aches and no pains ; they 
needed no bandages, no sphagnum moss, and no ether ; but 
what they did want was the old comfortable familiar things 
which they had seen the Red Cross doing along the Une of 
communication in the States, and the Red Cross saw to it that 
they got it Ukewise in England. As a matter of fact, our 
whole Camp Service, with every familiar feature, was 
transplanted from America to England by a Red Cross man 
who knew it backwards and forwards. He. saw to it that a 
homeUke Red Cross headquarters was set up in every camp ; 
and that we had the same familiar type of Field Director 
from New York or Boston or Chicago or Ohio, ready to do 
anything or get anything. Let me take a few figures from 
the record to let you know how prodigiously this Camp Serv- 
ice figured in the life of the American Army. The record 
shows that in one month there went out from the Red Cross 
storehouses to the American fighting men on their way to 
the front the following supplies : 30,000 sweaters ; 2000 
blankets; 10,000 razor-blades; 500,000 paper napkins; 
5,000,000 cigarettes ; 3000 pairs of socks ; 10,000 pairs of 
gloves; 300,000 boxes of matches; 8000 pounds of soap; 
2000 pounds of chocolate ; 50,000 sticks of chewing gum ; 
10,000 tubes of tooth paste; and other things ad in- 
finitum. 

As for the canteens — they were along the railways and 
in the camps and always had the best British war bread and 
the toothsome ^'Chicago ham'' and ^4amb-chop" and 
chocolate and all the rest of the innumerable other things at 
hand. Our supplies, of course, required considerable storage 
space, although nothing like that in Paris. Nevertheless 
there were three large warehouses in London, two in Liver- 
pool, and more in Glasgow and in Edinburgh and various 



GREAT BRITAIN 229 

English and Irish cities, and their contents all went to our 
soldiers. 

On the whole our Red Cross in England had every right 
to feel that they took as good care of the soldier on their side 
of the water as we did on our side, if allowance is made for 
the fact that in England, however hospitable and considerate 
her people, facilities there were not comparable with those 
at home. 

Nor did an American soldier ever have to lose sight of the 
Red Cross on his journey to the continent. Just as the Red 
Cross had been the first to meet him when he landed in 
England and last to bid him good-by when he embarked 
for France, just so it again welcomed him on the French 
dock and took him in charge. 

On each succeeding visit I made to England during the 
war I was impressed with the fact that the Red Cross in 
England was really a good deal like, if not precisely a replica 
of, our Red Cross at home : the Chapter was there, the work- 
rooms, the busy fingers, the flying needles, and the gauze 
for bandages. The London workrooms were a modest 
affair at first, but in a few months they grew to 30 vigorous 
branches with 2000 workers turning out 300,000 articles 
a month. When a call came for 2,250,000 surgical dressings 
of a special type, they were turned out at the rate of 150,000 
a week, and the whole order was finished long before the time 
set by the Army. 

With branches everywhere throughout England, the 
London Chapter had what was called a ^^Care Committee, '^ 
composed of American women who were notified as soon as 
an American soldier arrived at any hospital in England, and 
the members of this Committee, I am told, looked after 
10,000 American soldiers on an average in a month, estab- 
lishing communication with their families and providing 
all the little things that go to make life in a hospital more 
bearable. 



230 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

Communication Service also was maintained at a high 
level of effectiveness. Home Service — which somebody 
dubbed the ^^ Trouble Bureau '^ — was as busy in England 
as it was everywhere else, and everyone knows how busy 
this Department can be. Moreover, a large staff of searchers 
was enrolled by our Home Communication Service in Eng- 
land, and in one single day they secured complete records 
of more than a thousand American soldiers in British hos- 
pitals ; and what is more it did not fail to gather detailed 
information concerning each and every one of them. 

As may be easily seen there were all sorts of odds and ends 
of kindly work for the Red Cross to do. The schedule was 
never exhausted. Those whom it served, British as well as 
American, included not only officers and men but war 
workers, soldiers' families, and slum babies. Eight mater- 
nity centers were opened, and the Red Cross maintained a 
considerable amount of health and welfare work among the 
children of half a dozen crowded cities. Working in con- 
junction with local associations in London, it dealt with 500 
cases of aggravated shell-shock among children after the 
German air raids; and it provided money to send those 
most in need of quiet to homes in remote rural districts. 

Then there was our Library Committee in London, first 
organized by the London Chapter. It dispensed from its 
headquarters upwards of ten thousand books monthly to 
soldiers. This feat may be said to have aroused the interest, 
if not envy, of His Majesty King George V whenever he 
visited an American camp or hospital. He is represented 
as being unable to understand how our convalescents re- 
ceived the American papers so promptly. I do not know, 
of course, what explanation was given to him, but all 
Americans will understand, I think, when I say that the Red 
Cross saw to it. 

Grosvenor Gardens was the center of Red Cross war 
activities. The organization occupied five or six buildings 



GREAT BRITAIN 231 

close to the American Army and Navy Headquarters as 
well as the Embassy. And how busy these Red Cross 
buildings were during the height of their activity may be 
judged from the fact that their total budget reached nearly 
a million dollars a month. It is almost a pity that I have 
not space for the items of this budget, for they reflect clearly 
the tremendous increase in the number of men sent over 
during the latter months and the corresponding increase 
in Red Cross activity which spread rapidly to the remotest 
corners of the British Isles. Thus the canteen service 
installed large canteens at Southampton, Edinburgh, Bir- 
mingham, Cardiff, Glasgow, Winchester, Leicester, Derby, 
Romsey, and Chester, as well as hospital exchange canteens 
in fifteen places. The items in the general budget included 
provision not only for hospitals and camps but such things as 
officers' clubs, camp warehouses, shower-bath buildings, 
garages, portable houses for infirmaries, hospital theaters, 
and so on. 

On October 25 the indefatigable British Red Cross had 
what is called ^^Our Day, '' which is the date set apart for its 
annual drive for funds. It was our good fortune to start 
it off with a rush the night before when the Commissioner of 
the American Red Cross for Great Britain, at a Red Cross 
dinner given in their honor, handed to the Treasurer of the 
British organization a check for five hundred thousand 
pounds — two million, three hundred and eighty-five 
thousand dollars at the then current rate of exchange — 
as a subscription from the American Red Cross. Many 
distinguished British and Americans attended the dinner. 
Towards its close our Commissioner, in a few happy words, 
told his attentive hosts how grateful we Americans were for 
the great and generous service of the British Red Cross in 
placing at his disposal almost their entire organization. "I 
can cite countless instances," he went on to say, ''of your 
valuable assistance . . . and we should be sadly lacking 



232 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

in appreciation if we did not make some effort to show our 
gratitude. '^ 

The remarks of the Commissioner — as all who were 
present have testified — expressed so succinctly the appre- 
ciation of our people for the stupendous and ever increasing 
effort during four years of war on the part of the indomitable 
men and women of Great Britain, that there is no need for 
me to give here the contents of the letter which I sent with 
the check on behalf of the American people to the represent- 
atives of the British Red Cross and the Order of St. John. 
In conclusion, suffice it to say that no American could have 
been in England or the War Zone without a realization that 
no words could adequately express his admiration for the 
glorious part that England played towards bringing victory 
to her Allies and to herself. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

RUMANIA 

Appalling Conditions — American Red Cross Forces Fight Disease — 
Commission Treated with Courtesy by the Russian Government — No 
Transportation for Relief Supplies — Program of First Mission — The 
Story of her Majesty, the Queen — Agents Sent to Russia for Food — 
Food Brought to Jassy — Story Told by a Rumanian Newspaper — 
A Call to Washington for Supplies — Comprehensive List of Hospital 
Supplies — Supplementary Cablegram — Shipments by Order of 
War Council — Departure of Five Members of the Commission — 
British and American Red Cross Forces Cooperate — Some Supplies 
from the British Red Cross — An American Christmas — Carloads 
of Hospital Supplies and Food from America — Roman Hospital 
Taken Over from the British — Material for Clothing from Russia — 
Relief Station at Jassy — A People Dying for Principle — Distribu- 
tion at Sascut — Red Cross Aids Government Work for Orphans — 
Comfort and Healing for Thousands — End of Work of Commission 
— Members of Commission Decorated by Queen — Cable from Queen 
on Departure of Commission. 

IN the chapters of unhappiness which German-made war 
has written, there is none, to my mind, more pathetic 
than that of Rumania. Geographically, that country is a 
part of the Balkans whose mountain passes, since the days 
of the Caesars, have resounded without ceasing to the clash 
of arms. Battered by Romans, Turks, and Austrians, 
traded upon by Greeks, Russians, and Prussians, she has 
held fast to her place on the Danube, to her oil fields and her 
salt mines, her honesty of purpose and her faith in God. 

Here is a nation skilled in arms but which has no need for 
capital punishment. Here is a people which, even amid the 

233 



234 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

horrors of destructive war and in the clutches of starvation, 
maintained and expanded its system of compulsory educa- 
tion; a country where there are petty misdemeanors but 
no crime. Subject for divers periods to the Moslem, it 
remains a Christian nation. Surrounded by Slav, Goth, 
Vandal, and Turk and, although invaded times without 
number, it has still in its veins the blood of Trajan's soldiers. 
It remains a Latin race. 

To understand the dislike and rancor of the Teuton 
powers towards Rumania, one has merely to recall to mind 
that Rumania has a HohenzoUern king and that it was the 
people of Rumania who indorsed the Allied cause. In 
justice to the King, however, it must be said that once the 
decision was made, he loyally acquiesced and won the respect 
of his people and those of the Allied countries by his coura- 
geous leadership in the midst of disaster. The ambition of 
the Rumanians was to recover their ancient province of 
Transylvania and restore to their own household the popu- 
lations suffering under notorious Austrian misrule. With 
this prime purpose in view at their first entry into war, 
they drove their armies through the Austrian opposition 
into Transylvania in the autumn of 1916, and with the re- 
mainder held watch upon the Danube against the Bulgarians, 
who were massed to the south. But the Rumanian arma- 
ment at the opening of the war was of German manufacture 
and, obviously, could not be replaced. Again, their third 
province, Dobrudga, was by the terms of alliance to be 
defended by Russia, who, as we all know, failed in her 
compact. And Russia's failure in her part of the task 
spelled disaster to the Rumanian contingents on the west. 
German forces were added to the Austrians, and together 
they drove the Rumanian armies back into Wallachia; 
they bombarded Bucharest, and with its fall and the removal 
of the court to Jassy there began the Rumanian exodus 
into the northwest. 



RUMANIA 235 

Moldavia is a little province no larger than the state of 
Connecticut, and it was at once filled with millions of people 
who had httle or nothing to eat or to wear. This was in the 
beginning of December, 1916, — and Rumania has a climate, 
it is well to note, that is not unlike that of middle and lower 
Canada. 

When in 1917 the American Red Cross went into 
Rumania, its army was holding with grim tenacity the 
Moldavia boundaries, but machine guns could not block 
the progress of the invisible legions of disease. Every 
condition in the overcrowded, underfed remnant of Rumania, 
that still was free, was a standing invitation to this most 
deadly of the forces of war. At first came pneumonia, then 
typhus with a toll alone of 1000 lives, which was followed 
by recurrent fever and smallpox, all traveling with fatal 
swiftness through the crowded thoroughfares of Jassy and 
other towns, and along the country roads where the little 
villages joined one another. The uncomplaining, half- 
clad refugees, huddled like animals in their dugouts, struggled 
to keep the cold from pinching their lives out. They were 
consumed by vermin, the chief and efficient distributors of 
pestilence. In these wretched retreats the dead lay with 
the living, and hunger, the last executioner, waited at the 
doorway for such as might by miracle escape. There 
were two feet of ice and snow through that awful winter, 
and children, whose covering consisted only of a single cotton 
garment, went up and down crying for food until the clutch 
of the cold at last strangled their crying and put an end to 
their hunger. The dead were everywhere in the Jassy 
streets ; in the wards of civil hospitals patients were frozen 
to death. This was the price the Rumanian people paid 
for casting their strength into a cause that seemed to promise 
a united nation, living its simple life with work in a place of 
freedom. 

When the Red Cross went to lend what help it could to 



236 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

Rumania and its army at the front, the soldiers were well- 
ordered and intent upon their purpose, but the Russians were 
yielding to the spirit of disorder which followed the revolu- 
tion. Wherever they were quartered, there was filth. 
The manure piles from their horses Uttered the streets of 
the villages. The Russians drove the people out of their 
houses and took up residence in their stead; they invaded 
the hospitals and slept beside patients who were ill with 
contagion, and they consumed eternally the food supply, 
while the Rumanian peasantry starved and died. The 
people in the villages back of the Hues had no shoes and no 
stockings ; the refugees slept in the fields, exposed to the 
pitiless winds. 

There was httle left to sustain life nor medical care to 
sustain what there was of it, for the doctors were in the 
army or had succumbed to disease. A fortunate hamlet 
here and there had bread twice a week, while others had 
none at all. There were people in these miserable districts 
who subsisted hke the beasts, by gnawing the grass and 
roots of the fields. 

In Beltiu, a village in the district of Putna, our Red Cross 
visitors reported the most gruesome conditions. They found 
in one house three children whose father was at the front 
and the mother had died from typhus. A girl of ten was 
trying to care for the other two, one of whom lay dying on 
the floor of starvation. The third had only a ragged shirt 
which partly covered her and whose Httle body was no more 
than a framework. There was no one to help them — 
three httle souls flickering out. 

^'It was a tragic picture," our representative wrote, ^'of 
famine and disease from which even the Rumanian officer 
was forced to turn away." 

Another report told of a dilapidated house with the roof 
full of shell-holes and the glass all shattered from the windows, 
and in which ten persons were crowded in squalor and 



RUMANIA 237 

misery. There was no bedding except some bags. The 
tenant was an old woman whose husband had just died, 
but she had three sons in the army. She was a mere 
specter. There was not even a handful of cornmeal in the 
house. One child of three lay under the stove in which 
there Hngered dying embers of a little fire ; the other nine 
were strewn about the place. Hunger-stricken, horror- 
stricken, waiting the death-stroke from shell-fire or pestilence, 
trusting in the bravery of the Rumanian Army to guard them 
from harm, complaining not at all, burying at night their 
poor httle possessions to save them from the Germans -- 
these were the wretched people for whom Marie of Rumania, 
granddaughter of Queen Victoria, sacrificed earthly riches 
and gave gladly the best years of a gifted and beautiful life. 
In the first crowded months when the Red Cross War 
Council faced its problem of carrying rehef to a world over- 
whelmed with suffering, the word that came out of Rumania 
had been sorry enough ; but by the time the Red Cross 
Mission which was dispatched in August had traversed 
the long way to the scene of its labors, Rumania had become 
a tragedy, the more heartbreaking because it was played 
out in stoical silence and with unwavering faith. All know 
that in our devotion to the niceties of surgical science we 
demand the perfection of sterihzation ; but the wounds of 
soldiers in Rumania, torn by German missiles, were being 
dressed with whatever was available. Rumanian children 
swarmed the streets with stomachs and feet swollen from 
dropsy ; pellagra claimed its victims by thousands. 

To reach Rumania, the Red Cross Mission was compelled 
to journey by Vladivostok and cross the long reaches of 
Siberia. It was met with every courtesy by the Russian 
government, but underneath the visible surface of its wartime 
life, Russia, like every other AUied country, was honey- 
combed with German intrigue and peopled with German 
agents gnawing Uke rats at the underpinning of the state. 



238 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

Russian railroads, for the most part in the secret control of 
Germany, lagged and miscarried in their labor of supplying 
the Russian troops. On the wharves of Vladivostok were 
lying millions of dollars' worth of supplies for the Russian 
soldiery which should have been delivered three years before. 
Already, the great clumsy body which had been Russia, was 
tottering to its fall ; and in the midst of the unrest there 
came to the surface the ancient hatred of Rumania, which 
had been put away when the Rumanians entered into the 
Entente. 

Assiduously nourished by the German agents, this hoary 
grudge wrought itself out in the studied delay of Rumanian 
supplies, the failure of the Russian officials to ship, even, into 
Rumania, the food for maintenance of their own troops. 
As a result, Russia, a well-nigh inexhaustible granary, was 
herself starving, and with munitions awaiting them some- 
where, the Russian peasant soldiers confronted with bare 
hands the merciless artillery of the Huns. 

In this light, it is not difficult for me to understand why 
the Red Cross Mission was ushered with all politeness and 
the greatest possible expedition into Rumania but thereafter 
could secure almost no transport for the material of rehef. 
There was no access to the suffering Rumanians after the 
reverses of 1916, save over the endless roads of Russia, with 
the invisible German clutch upon them all. 

Slowly, but surely, the patriotic people of a brave little 
country were being starved into the arms of the Central 
Powers. Behind them Turkey, Bulgaria, and the Sea; 
on the north a Russia which had played them false and was 
even now on the brink of a German peace ; and to the west, 
the Hun, taking fuel from the Rumanian oil wells, feeding 
on the Rumanian harvest, harrying the devoted army, 
and through its Russian agents stopping the supply of the 
simplest necessities. Seemingly, the doom of Rumania 
was written, even then, in letters so large that no man could 



RUMANIA 239 

fail to read them. On the black horizon shone no ray of 
hope save that at last the Allied Arms might triumph and 
the dream of centuries come true. 

It had been the purpose of the Red Cross to perform a 
great labor of relief in Rumania, to care for her refugees 
and her fighting men, to supply nurses and doctors and food 
and clothing in abundance, to restore her strength and to 
uphold her courage, to help her stand firm as the pillar of 
Allied strength in southeastern Europe. But Germany 
had planned too well. From the time when the German 
divisions, fighting every step of the way, drove down into 
the rich plains of Wallachia, the days of Rumanian resistance 
were numbered. This fact was all too evident. Indeed, 
the Director of the Red Cross Mission has since informed us 
that he had had no illusions about the truth of this state- 
ment from the moment of his arrival at Jassy. It was the 
program, however, of this first Mission, to make rapid and 
thorough canvass of Rumanian needs, and after a few weeks 
to return and outline a broad general plan of action. When 
it came to Jassy, the Mission brought with it only the smallest 
of supplies. In that land of desolation and want they 
vanished in a day. It was not a question of studying the 
needs of Rumania ; the need of Rumania was a nightmare. 
Its voices were never silent. It stared in the streets; it 
prayed from the cadaverous faces of that misery-marked 
populace; the sick, the naked, and the starving were on 
every hand and winter was at the door. 

In all the tragic panorama of the War, there appears, 
perhaps, no sadder and nobler figure than Marie of Rum^ania, 
a Queen, to paraphrase, who is every inch a woman and who 
had been trying at the cost of every conceivable sacrifice, 
with a courage equaled only by her devotion, to stem the tide 
of suffering. Utterly fearless, she had gone among her 
starved and scourge-ridden people like an angel, carrying 
such food and clothing and medicine as she could gather 



240 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

among those who themselves had nothing. Into the typhus 
hospitals where hundreds lay djdng of smallpox; into the 
horrible dugouts of the refugees; into every place where 
there was a mouth that she could feed or a soul that she 
could cheer, day by day went the Queen of Rumania, and 
yet, by some strange dispensation, she lived. But, although 
passing scathless herself, her youngest son, unfortunately, 
fell a victim to the typhoid in the early days of his struggle ; 
yet far from giving up from this new grief in her heart, she 
plunged all the deeper into her work of mercy. 

To our Red Cross Commissioner this unhappy Queen told 
in detail the story of her country's misfortune, which had 
been crowded into one brief year. 

"The retreat from Wallachia," her Majesty said, "the sorrow and 
depression of a vanquished Army is a story filled with tragic grief; the 
winter was one of darkest horror, thousands of our soldiers died of sheer 
want. We could neither feed, clothe, warm, nor house them. Disease 
in its worst form fell upon us ; and being cut off from all aid, we struggled 
against odds we had no means of overcoming. Row upon row of graves 
and uncounted numbers of rough wooden crosses throughout the land 
stand as mute witness of a tale too sad to relate. Thousands of little 
children, left without father or mother, died before help could reach them, 
and I, the Queen, heard each cry of anguish, shared each terror, and 
divided each fear. Then spring came — and as by a miracle, our armies 
seemed to have a rebirth. The specters that had haunted our streets in 
winter became soldiers once more. Our thinned ranks were filled up. A 
new desire for vengeance and intense longing for homes taken away by 
the enemy steeled every heart for a new effort. But our newborn hopes 
were destined to wither away. The Russian revolution had sown discord 
and disorganization in the hearts of our nearest allies, and when the great 
hour for action came — the hour which our army had hungered for, and 
into which our troops had thrown themselves with a bravery that justified 
our dearest hoDes — our neighbors failed us." 

In the files of the Red Cross, there are many declarations 
in various languages of gratitude for the great and the timely 
aid of the American people. It is doubtful, however, if 
ever there came a deeper note of thankfulness than that of 



RUMANIA 241 

the Rumanian Queen and her suffering people for our work of 
relief during the winter of 1917. 

'^But there was only one thing to do, '^ wrote the chairman 
of the Commission. *^To get food, medicine, and clothing 
from any source and in whatever quantity possible, in order 
to save what lives we could before disease and starvation 
and the winter should outstrip the German armies in the 
ruin of the land. . . .'^ Fortunately the Commissioner 
had some funds which had been placed in his hands for 
such casual use as might be required, and he requisitioned 
this for obtaining food. 

It was not, of course, a dietetic question. The need was 
for food, — anything that would sustain life. And the re- 
port shows that with all possible haste agents were dispatched 
to every corner of Russia, where starvation had already set in, 
to pry out from its hiding place whatever food the magic 
of money might discover. To Moscow, to Petrograd, to 
Odessa, and even distant Archangel, to every place that 
might afford a chance of victualment, they hurried at post 
haste. In Moscow they found flour and beans ; in Odessa 
they bought tons of dried vegetables; in the North they 
found five thousand barrels of herrings, and all these and 
other things they drove forward over the congested and dis- 
organized Russian railways through districts whose popu- 
lations were even then on the verge of civil war, with guards 
riding the *^ wagons" to fend off the hungry mobs in towns 
through which they passed. 

So at last when the food train rolled into Jassy, there was a 
storage house ready for its cargo, and in the heart of the city 
adjoining the national theater, a canteen was opened and 
equipped. All that were there unite in saying that it was 
indeed a sorry coterie — some five hundred and odd persons 
who came on the first day merely to satisfy their curiosity. 
For the Rumanian, near neighbor to the hard trading East, 
had little faith in the story that these strange Americans 



242 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

would give away food for nothing. If it were true, they 
told themselves, then such people must be seen anyway, 
for such a phenomenon would never happen again. On the 
second and third days, however, the number increased until 
on the fourth day the American canteen was feeding two 
thousand people who without it would have died of 
starvation. In this connection I am sure that an excerpt 
from a Rumanian newpaper would be of interest. It read 
as follows : — 

"The hungry poor from the outskirts of the town, especially the women 
and children, began to assemble early in the morning in front of the shed, 
in which were also the kitchen and the store full of food brought from be- 
yond the ocean, from the country of friendly deeds, not of words, empty 
and illusive as the dust of the road. Every day the mmaber of those who 
came from the borders of the town, the naked and hungry, increased. The 
distribution of the food begins at ten o'clock and lasts until three. Around 
the two tables there is room for a hundred and twenty people. All of 
these are in rags, and with faces emaciated to the bones. In one hour, 
about nine hundred can eat. The greater number were children between 
six and twelve years of age. I have even seen mites only three or four 
years old, with shaggy hair, bare feet, and clothed in rags, out of which 
their thin Httle bodies protruded. Some came from as far away as the 
windmill where on the Tatarasi hill the white belfry of the church in the 
Eternitatia cemetery stands. Early in the morning they leave their 
shanties, half dug into the earth, and drag their rags through the dust or 
mud of the numberless little alleys toward the shed out of which daily 
flows the aroma of hot food. It seems as though the American mission 
had spoken the Biblical words of the Savior, 'Suffer little children to come 
unto Me.' And the children, with thin faces and naked feet, descend 
every morning from all the suburbs toward the foreign Pity, which rises 
like a white Christ out of the midst of human evil." 

Was there ever an article that appealed more to the heart ? 
And what is more those present declared that this motley 
throng cheered the American flag, kissed the hands of the 
workers, threw things into the air, and wept and prayed and 
carried home morsels of food to their brothers and sisters, 
who were too weak to undertake the journey, while, almost 



RUMANIA 243 

simultaneously, I may say, the Commissioner was cabling 
us in Washington for supplies of every sort. 

Although hampered by the almost total lack of trans- 
portation, the relief of the refugees was already under 
way and advancing day by day. There was a crying need, 
of course, for some means of supplying hospital accommo- 
dations for the multitude of wounded and sick. Without 
these, it was plain, disaster would overtake the army, 
which was almost entirely bereft of any means of caring 
for its wounded men. Besides, the defection of Russia has 
brought a heavier blow than the miUtary reverse: The 
hospitals, maintained by the Rumanian Red Cross on the 
front, had been swept away in the German deluge, and at 
best they had little enough of equipment. Moreover, 
Moldavia was so far from the original front that no possi- 
bility of retreat to it had ever been entertained, and no 
preparation made there for the estabhshment of hospitals. 
And when the retreat did come with its great lists of 
wounded, every school and other large building was utihzed, 
but there was no equipment. For beds, they had coarse 
sacking stuffed with straw and only one sheet and one 
blanket to each bed. There was no adequate supply of 
fuel and the transport service, what there was of it, was 
all employed in army supply. It must not be forgotten, 
also, that Rumania had few railways. The highways were 
good but there were few cars, and the oil supply was in the 
hands of the enemy. Many of the oxen which did most of 
the heavy hauling of the country had been taken by the 
army and lost. Three million of them, along with propor- 
tionate numbers of horses and sheep, had been sold to 
Russia and Germany at the beginning of the war by men 
whose greed obscured their vision. In almost everything 
Rumania was beyond the possibihty of self-help. She had 
no trained nurses — only wiUing women — and of her 
twelve hundred doctors, two hundred had died from 



244 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

typhus, and a great number, not definitely known, had 
met death in battle. 

Indeed, so obvious and so vast was the lack of hospital 
accommodation that almost immediately upon the arrival 
of the Mission in September, the Director cabled a requisition 
to us in Washington for a comprehensive list of hospital 
supplies, which in condensed cable form covered nearly two 
closely typewritten pages. The list began with 250,000 
yards of mattress cloth, ran through the entire range of 
simple drugs and essential instruments, and ended with 
spaghetti sufficient for 20,000 patients for six months. This 
list was the minimum. Two days later, the following sup- 
plementary cable was filed : — 

Civil population worse condition. Three million in territory inhabited 
by one million. No clothing, shoes, or material for same obtainable any 
price. Plainest food bought in Russia limited amount. Transport un- 
certain. No nourishing foods available for sick or wounded. Eighteen 
thousand orphans registered ; probably many more. All without clothes 
or shoes of any kind for winter. Unless warm clothing, shoes, or ma- 
terials with needle, thread, and accessories make same, sent immediately, 
these and many additional civilians must die this winter. Much sickness 
now. Some typhus. Severe epidemics inevitable this winter unless 
can obtain supplies and take prompt measures required prevent far- 
reaching disaster. Useless try handle situation without some one with 
authority and access to Government on ground with proper organization 
similar to Belgium look after transport, receive, and distribute supplies 
and spend what money can be advantageously used here and in Russia. 
Can probably secure cooperation of representatives of Allies here. Deem 
situation so serious am willing to remain all winter, organize, and handle 
matter if desired, provided can be assured substantial support. Will 
probably require several million dollars for effective work. Large part 
would be spent in America, remainder here. Details be sent later. Must 
have regular transport for definite supplies. Think we can arrange this 
in Russia if you can arrange ocean tonnage. Announcement of definite 
policy and appropriations would have most beneficial effect now. 

Spurred on by this revelation of the imperative need of 
Rumania, we of the War Council made haste to ship from 



RUMANIA 245 

New York such hospital supplies and food as could be 
obtained. Shortly after this five of the members of the 
Commission, following the original program, returned to 
America; but the Chairman together with the remaining 
members stayed on as did the eleven doctors and twelve 
nurses. And this httle force set out to cope with the dis- 
heartening task of Rumanian relief despite the fact that 
everything seemed against their success. 

But they did not have to struggle with this forlorn hope all 
alone : the British Eed Cross fought side by side with them. 
This organization had undertaken a brave work of relief, 
but like the Rumanian Red Cross had been swamped by the 
conditions. Then* doctors had made a canvass of all the 
districts in the Httle provinces and learned the sorrows of 
Rumania first hand ; they had traversed the front from Delli 
to the Carpathians and studied the needs of the makeshift 
hospitals where even bedding and food and hospital clothes 
were wholly lacking and the patients undernourished, and 
where used bandages and blood-stained garments were put 
back after the soldier's wounds were dressed. But for the 
betterment of these dire conditions, there was no hope save 
in shipments from the United States. All western Europe 
was struggling under a need of them which it could not 
supply. There was nothing left for them but to wait and 
to hope, while the poison of German intrigue and treachery 
increased from day to day the uncertainty of all dependence 

upon Russia. 

Meanwhile, the labor of civihan relief went on. By the 
New Year our Red Cross, in cooperation with the British 
Red Cross and Queen Marie, was feeding ten thousand people 
in Moldavia, and awaiting with such patience as it could the 
arrival of supplies which we had shipped to them. By 
good fortune the Director of the British Red Cross had in 
storage a quantity of condensed milk which he contributed 
for the feeding of infants ; while on our part attention was 



246 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

given to the alleviation of the misery of the soldiers at the 
front. At Roman in the hospital the Red Cross gave 
something the patients had never dreamed of seeing — an 
American Christmas. Evergreens were brought down from 
the mountains, and candles were found in all sorts of places 
for their illumination. There were little gifts, such things 
as the workers of the Commission could find or manufacture ; 
there was food and songs to sing, and as if in despite of the 
misery that hung like a pall everywhere, there was the spirit 
of the Christmas over it all. To brighten the sky for a 
multitude of unhappy refugees, the Chairman of the Com- 
mission cabled us that he had given to the Queen just before 
Christmas for distribution the sum of 250,000 lei (about 
$20,000) . Food of every sort and in lots both large and 
small was purchased wherever obtainable. 

There was a distribution two days before Christmas in 
Sascut of dried fish, sunflower oil, and cornmeal. Two 
hundred and sixty-eight families carried away supplies of 
food and plans were made for further dispensation through a 
committee of the Commune, the Notar, the village priest, 
the schoolmaster, and the chief of police, who were to furnish 
lists of the needy. A Belgian sugar refiner in the district 
and his wife attached themselves to the Red Cross and 
gathered every available scrap of old clothing and other 
supplies ; they established a Red Cross sub-depot in their 
house and visited the people of the surrounding country 
three or four days each week. They organized a company 
of young Rumanian women as relief workers, and when the 
first of March came, they were ready on the coming of spring 
to carry on the work on a larger scale. Through January 
the Red Cross had started to lend a hand to the government 
work for orphans. These constituted a large problem in 
themselves. The casualties of war and the ravages of 
disease had raised this menace to a terrifying proportion. 
Schoolhouses were secured which, formerly, had been used 



RUMANIA 247 

as Army hospitals and in which during the preceding year 
hundreds of men had died from typhus. The slow process 
of cleaning and equipping these places had gone on steadily. 
The relief work in Jassy and many of the outlying districts 
was well organized though hampered by the fatal lack of 
supplies. The hospitals at Roman and in Jassy with their 
500 beds were doing a distinguished work with the limited 
facilities available. The Red Cross, in the face of almost 
insurmountable obstacles, had brought comfort and healing 
to the thousands of sufferers (and even dying people). 
In a land where there was no food it was feeding 40,000 
people and turning out from its relief station clothing that 
saved unnumbered lives. It had reached through a sea of 
difficulties the firm ground of organization where it was ready 
to handle a great work of rehef. 

From America, in November, there had come two car- 
loads of hospital supplies and one of food ; and with these 
and what remained of the British equipment, the Red 
Cross took over the British hospital at Roman, 60 miles 
from Jassy and 30 miles from the front. This single ship- 
ment was all that ever reached Rumania of the supplies 
which were sent forward by orders of the War Council in 
Washington. But even with such materials as these limited 
sources could supply all accounts agree that the Commission 
made of the Roman hospital by far the best institution of its 
kind in all Rumania. The British had turned it into a good 
establishment, heated by steam and lighted by electricity. 
Its function was that of a base hospital to which soldiers were 
removed after first treatment at the front. A number of 
civil cases were also taken. In the rear of the hospital were 
erected wooden barracks with sleeping accommodations for 
upward of a hundred orderlies. There were also a car- 
penter's shop, shoemaker's shop, machine shop, an outside 
swimming pool, a disinfector, a large laundry, two motor 
ambulances, two operating rooms, an X-ray laboratory, and 



248 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

ocular and dental departments. The Thanksgiving Day 
celebration at the hospital, which the Queen attended, was 
an occasion long to be remembered. 

Once having got the Roman hospital into thorough opera- 
tion, the Red Cross undertook to establish a civilian hospital 
in an old palace in Jassy, a work which was well on the way 
to completion when the concentration of troops in Jassy 
made it necessary to take the building as barracks. 

The winter was now at its height, but the clothing problem 
had in a measure been relieved. From various places in 
Russia the Commission had secured some 400,000 yards of 
cloth, 100,000 spools of thread, 50,000 needles, half a car- 
load of buttons, and 50 sewing machines. The Red Cross 
Canteen at Jassy was operated in connection with a public 
triage — a bathhouse and disinfector ; and having cleaned 
and fed and restored to animate interest in life some thou- 
sands of starving women, the Red Cross opened in conjunc- 
tion with the canteen a clothing department. There women, 
as soon as supplies were obtained, were set to work in the 
hurried manufacture of simple clothing to save threatened 
lives. Thousands of garments were manufactured, the 
Queen herself distributed maiiy of them in the small country 
villages and, in addition, the utter lack of shoes was over- 
come by making simple moccasins from canvas and burlap, 
which proved a most satisfactory substitute. There were, 
at least, fewer frozen, bleeding feet in the streets and 
highways of Moldavia. The records show that at the relief 
station in Jassy where now food, clothing, disinfection, 
and medical attention were dispensed, 1200 persons were 
cared for daily from the date of its opening on February 25 
up to March 9, when the Commission was forced to leave 
Rumania by the imposition of the German peace. 

Now that the suffering had, in a measure, been modified, 
every hand in Rumania was called into service. Widows 
and orphans and crippled soldiers joined in the work, carry- 



RUMANIA 249 

ing Red Cross assistance to the needy when their own govern- 
ment was powerless. The American flag and the Red Cross 
emblem in every district were the signboards pointing the 
way to help. The heroic Queen traveled Rumanian roads 
in good and bad weather. There was no such thing in all 
Moldavia as public charity, for no one had anything to 
give away. They had lost it all. Charitable organizations, 
which had been amply endowed for whatever relief was 
necessary in peace times, were hopelessly crippled by the 
terrific strain of war. Commercial stocks of food and cloth- 
ing had vanished and there was no hope of replacement. 
The greater part of the factory installation in Wallachia had 
been left behind in the retreat ; those in Moldavia were 
destroyed to save them from German hands. There was 
no oil for machinery, no cows to furnish milk for babies, no 
Russian ally. 

It was a people dying for a principle, no more, no less. 
With all their suffering, they made no complaint. The 
Army must have the best — all, if need be. In the desolate 
villages behind the front it was counted good fortune for a 
peasant family to get the entrails of an animal that had been 
slaughtered for the Army. The wretched people boiled 
this offal and made soup to keep the breath of life in them. 
The Army was in good order and would fight to its last 
soldier. It had no other purpose. But if Russia fell, every- 
thing fell. 

And then, indeed, the bell rang for the curtain. On the 
9th of March, to save herself from the utter annihilation 
which Germany had promised for the little Balkan country's 
portion, Rumania gave up the struggle. It left her hemmed 
in by revengeful enemies and with the knowledge that Rus- 
sia, her former protector, had played her false in practically 
the last political act before she herself went down into an 
abyss of revolution and Bolshevism. 

The AlHed world laid no charge of bad faith at the door of 



250 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

Rumania. Her necessity was too obvious. She had tried 
and failed. In the trial she had stripped herself bare of 
every possession, and had lost by slaughter and disease about 
ten per cent of her population. With us such a payment 
would mean ten millions of our people ! It is indeed to be 
hoped that Rumania's sacrifices be not wholly forgotten even 
in these days of short memories. 

Scarcely had Rumania yielded than the Germans ordered 
the immediate dismissal of all French, British, and American 
agents of rehef from the country. It was folly, of course, 
to expect any reversal of this order. At the time of the 
Mission's departure Rumania's Queen cabled to Washington 
as follows : — 

"At this hour when tragic events leave my country defenseless in the 
hands of a revengeful and relentless enemy, my thoughts turn with grati- 
tude towards those who in anxious days, but when there was still hope, 
came to my aid. I wish once more to thank the American Red Cross for 
the splendid way in which it answered my appeal of a few months ago. 
The work the American Red Cross Commission did amongst our wounded 
and amongst the suffering population is unforgetable to me and my 
people. Now that my country has to remain alone and forsaken, sur- 
rounded by foes, I wish once more to raise my voice and to thank all those 
who helped me, and to ask that we and our nation should not be forgotten, 
although a dreadful and humiliating peace has been forced upon us. I 
ask of the great heart of America to remember Rumania, if even for a 
while. Strangulated, her cries will not reach it, and her tears will have 
to be wept in secret." 

' There is little more of this sad story to be told. To the 
thoughtless, or those who think in numerals and have not 
the larger view of what the Red Cross purpose really is, it 
might appear that its mission in Rumania was a failure. 
But even these persons, I think, would not say so had they 
been among the fortunate ones who were present when Marie 
of Rumania conferred decorations on the members of our 
Mission. All of them have since said that they knew^ that 
the decorations were the only proofs of her gratitude that 



RUMANIA 251 

the Queen had left to give, but it was easy to see that she 
exulted in the giving. On our part, the Commission put 
into the Queen's hands an order for food sufficient to feed 
several thousand persons for six months. And when the 
Commission took up the perilous road to the North through 
Russia, thousands of these people, who for centuries have 
forgotten no kindness and no injury, crowded the public 
square to say Godspeed to those who were leaving their un- 
happy country. It was a demonstration of a Nation's 
affection and an assurance that the memory of our efforts, 
however pitiful when contrasted with the need, will never 
fade as long as the Danube flows to the sea. 



CHAPTER XIX 

THE TRAGEDY OF THE EAST 

Serbia — The Great Retreat of the Serbian Army — Reorganization of 
Army in June and July, 1916 — Conditions in April, 1917 — First 
Commission to Serbia — Hospitals Established — Shelter Provided 

— Cargo of Steamship Coesar Purchased — Rolling Canteens and 
Supplies for Army — Gift to Serbian Red Cross — Pitiful Plight of 
Prisoners — Tons of Farm Machinery and Tools Sent from America 

— $70,000 for Clothing for Serbian Prisoners — Food and Clothing 
from Red Cross Warehouses in Berne for Prisoners — $75,000 for 
Serbian Refugees in Bucharest — Help for Tuberculous Serbians in 
France, Switzerland, and Italy — $25,000 for Serbians m Siberia — 
Greece — Conditions in Greece when the War Began — Germany's 
Work in Greece through the Turk and Bulgar — Greeks Driven 
from Their Homes — Greek Red Cross Appeals for Aid — Allies 
Furnish Medical and Hospital Supplies — In the Islands of the 
uEgean Sea — American Red Cross Commission to Greece — Pales- 
tine — Cable from the American Committee for Syrian and Ar- 
menian Relief — British Relief Fund — Medical Units !EstabHshed 
by British — Red Cross Commission Sails — Conditions Found in 
Jerusalem and Adjacent Country — Description of Relief Work — 
Total Appropriations by War Council to October 1, 1918. 

N telling the story of the Red Cross in the East the dis- 
comforting thought is ever present in my mind that I 
may not dwell as long as I should like upon a scene as touchr- 
ing as that which concluded the report from Rumania. 
No sooner have I visualized the little station at Jassy and 
rejoiced, however vicariously, with the departing mission 
in their consciousness of a deed well done than I am called 
upon by the very nature of this book to depict scenes of 

252 



THE TRAGEDY OF THE EAST 253 

suffering in Serbia and Greece, Palestine, and the Near East 
that would appear to be more poignant than anywhere else 
in Europe. 

Until our own entry into the struggle the Balkans, if the 
truth must be told, had been merely a name, a far-off place 
associated with rugged hills and beautiful embroideries; 
and, in a relief way, our only touch with it had been in the 
special Typhus Commission that went to Serbia in 1914. 

Serbia's role in the war may be fixed by events before and 
after the Great Retreat in the fall of 1915 — when the 
Serbian Army, hopelessly outnumbered, commenced its 
retirement with the snow three feet deep and the cold in 
the bleak Albanian hills almost unbearable. Soldiers were 
Httle better clad than the wretched civilians who dropped 
in the snow and lay where they fell. The historic retreat 
of Napoleon's armies across the snowbound Russian plains 
from Moscow was less fearful. Of the Serb Army of 250,000 
that had opposed the enemy at the frontiers, less than 
100,000 reached the ultimate haven — Corfu, that lies Uke 
a fairy isle in the Ionian Sea. Fifty per cent of the civilians 
who fled out of Serbia died of starvation, disease, and exposure 
before help could reach them ; while of the remaining half, 
20,000 found sanctuary in foreign lands, Corsica, Switzer- 
land, France, and Italy, and along the African coast. During 
the following year, great effort was made by the British and 
French governments, and sympathetic individuals every- 
where, to mitigate the sufferings of these homeless people 
who had been driven from their firesides to the ends of the 
earth. 

But I must not forget that it is of the Serbians in Serbia 
of whom I would write, the singing Serbs of the gentle 
hearts and genial firesides who, in the midst of a turbulent 
land, under a wise and generous government, have managed 
to preserve the autonomy of the Serbian States as well as 
its customs and traditions. 



254 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

In June and July, 1916, the beaten army began to struggle 
out of Corfu, bolstered by allied support, reequipped and 
reclothed by allied funds. Many still suffered the effects 
of the retreat, and their physical stamina was not of the 
strongest; but there were 30,000 Serbs at the front with 
the allied forces that drove the Austrians from Monastir ! 

By April, 1917, there were 50,000 civilian refugees in the 
little recaptured area, crowded chiefly into the shell-raked 
city and the wretched outlying villages; and there were 
200,000 more scattered through the bleak plains of Mace- 
donia all the way to Saloniki. It was here in this region 
that the Red Cross found them in the summer of 1917, 
living in cellars, barns, churches, and mosques, subsisting 
as best they could, menaced by cold, hunger, and disease. 
The enemy had stripped the countryside of its grain, horses, 
cattle, food, and metals ; there was nothing, they say, not 
even a match with which to start a fire. Dearth, indeed! 
To go into such desolation was like going into a wilderness. 
It was like making the world over again. 

The base of the Red Cross activity was, perforce, the 
Greek port of Saloniki that was having troubles enough of 
its own — with half of the city homeless after the great fire — 
without 10,000 additional refugees. Here the Red Cross 
established soup kitchens ; the sight of hot, appetizing food 
apparently conjured out of empty air seemed a mysterious 
feat to the natives ; barracks, sewing rooms, hospitals, and 
dispensaries were set up in accordance with the regular 
prescribed formula for the building up of civilian relief. 
Chaos enough there was in the city of Saloniki, more cosmo- 
politan than ever now with its narrow, hilly streets filled 
with strange, surging throngs ; with strange ships in its 
harbors and Turkish guns trained at its heart ; with strange 
soldiers in its streets and cafes and bazaars and always the 
crying, hungry masses that the Red Cross had come to feed 
and comfort. A dismal, endless, hopeless task it seemed 



THE TRAGEDY OF THE EAST 255 

and more wretched, somehow, than a similar task had 
seemed in other places. There was so little on which to 
build, either materially or spiritually. 

In the harbor of Alexandria, Egypt, lay the coUier Ccesar, 
loaded with food, clothing, and medicine, which had been 
sent by the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian 
rehef . Its destination had been Beirut on the Syrian coast, 
but operations in the Mediterranean had checked its de- 
parture. Of this the Red Cross took immediate advantage, 
buying the shipload of supplies outright and bringing them 
at once to the distribution point. This was more than 
timely; it was like manna from Heaven in this remote 
region which, inaccessible enough to the western world in 
normal times, was now strugghng with the additional 
difficulties of Turkish gunboats, Austrian submarines, and 
British mines. 

At this point, I take the liberty of making a slight 
digression in order to extend the gratitude of the Red 
Cross to the American Committee for Armenian and 
Syrian Relief for its splendid cooperation in the Near East. 
This had been one of the first relief agencies in the field 
endeavoring to salvage the thousands of starving and 
homeless people along the coast of Palestine and ancient 
Judea. After our coming we were glad in many instances 
to profit by their experiences and to follow their example. 
What the Red Cross could not do the Armenian and Syrian 
Committee did; territory untouched by the Red Cross 
was covered by them, and throughout there was the spirit 
of friendly understanding and cooperation and a happy 
dovetailing of enterprise at all points where they met on a 
common platform. It is therefore timely that due thanks 
be extended to this capable organization that contributed 
so largely to the relief so vitally needed in this desolate 
region. 

In Serbia proper the Red Cross centered its refugee work 



256 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

in Vodena, a city half-way between Saloniki and Monastir, 
in which about 5000 refugees had found shelter. The first 
act of the Red Cross was the setting up of a fifty-bed hos- 
pital in a building supplied by the Greek Government; 
later, a second one of twice the capacity was established 
at Banitza, sixty-five miles from Saloniki. 

Tiie villages about Monastir were crowded with home- 
less people who would not be dragged from their shattered 
firesides. To pamper this home-clinging spirit the Red 
Cross constructed a number of adobe houses on frame- 
works of wattles, a type of dwelling pecuhar to all the 
Mediterranean countries and the Near East. In Saloniki, 
forests of tents were laid in the suburbs to shelter the fire 
victims, and milk was distributed regularly to the children. 
Clothing, shoes, and staple foodstuffs which they could not 
give to the penniless strangers within their gates, were 
purchased from the local shops ; and, in this way, the hungry 
were fed, the naked clothed, and the Red Cross became 
the wonder-worker of the East. 

For the troops, rolling canteens like those in use on other 
battlefronts were dispatched to the Serbian front; motor 
trucks were ordered from Italy; and quantities of canvas 
for beds and hospital stretchers were purchased and made 
up. An artificial limb factory was started in Saloniki, 
while a staff of American dentists with ten fully equipped 
dental ambulances was sent from New York for service with 
the Serb armies. A sum of $50,000 was given to the Serbian 
Red Cross, which had moved its headquarters to Corfu, 
with a branch in Geneva. 

I have not yet mentioned the Serbian prisoners of war in 
Austria and Bulgaria. These, also, became the wards of 
the Red Cross, and theirs is yet another chapter in the story 
of terror and cruelty. There were 154,000 of them in cap- 
tivity, facing the Austrian winter without proper food or 
clothing. The Red Cross made an appropriation of $70,000 



THE TRAGEDY OF THE EAST 257 

to take care of their most vital needs, and tons of supplies 
soon began to move through Berne to Serbs in enemy- 
prison camps. The story of these prisoners is an old one, 
and it were trite to dwell anew on prison camp life with its 
attendant horrors of pestilence, death, starvation, cruelty, 
and cold in a strange and friendless land. Many a Serb 
in his ransomed home to-day owes his hfe to the food sent 
by the Red Cross. In addition, generous appropriation was 
made for the sustenance and medical care of tubercular 
Serbs in France, Switzerland, and Italy. 

Thus the Red Cross intrenched itself in the hearts and 
hearths of Serbia. With the grand rally of the Serbian Army 
in the autumn of 1918, when all events moved towards the 
great cHmax, the Red Cross was still there with its rolHng 
canteens and its comforts, although it was desolate enough 
at that, and sounds far more encouraging in printed words 
than it actually was, for the whole situation was hopeless 
and lacking in all those essentials that are absolute 
necessities to the efficiency of the spoiled and pampered 
westerner. It was a last, grand desperate effort, backed up 
by allied aid, against a staggering foe. The last bitter 
campaign was marked by great suffering among the troops. 
There were no women nurses, no anaesthetics, no surgical 
dressings save the pitifully small amount the Red Cross 
was able to supply, for the transportation problem was 
always an uncertain factor, one on which wagers could not 
safely be laid at any time. Tonnage was more precious 
than the jewels of a Rajah, and when it came to the loading 
of a relief ship there was always a debate as to which should 
be given preference — food, clothing, medical supplies, or 
surgical dressings, each item being needed as badly as the 
other. If some were clothed, wounds were neglected; if 
wounds were dressed, backs went bare or stomachs empty. 
Over $600,000 was spent for relief supplies in Serbia, and 
even then, the Red Cross task was only half done. 



258 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

Looking down the long vista of her history, Serbia will 
find no page that is illumined with more valorous deeds 
and superhuman courage in the face of titanic odds than 
that which fills her role in the Great War — ^^ Serbia that 
fights only for freedom and surrenders only to God.'' 



■ Of all the strange, incongruous settings that had to do 
with the transplanting of the Red Cross and its modern 
trappings, there have been none to compare with Greece 
— that cradle of art and classic antiquity, whose finger- 
prints are visible through the ages wherever men have tried 
to live greatly. Strange, indeed, it must have seemed to 
see the all too familiar bread lines and soup kitchens and 
dispensaries within the shadow of the towering Acropo- 
lis, white against the Athenian sky under the frown of 
Olympus or in the Daphne haunted glades of Tempe. 

The r61e of the Red Cross in ancient Hellas was confined 
almost entirely to civilian relief work, although this does 
not mean that its field there was a narrow one or in any 
way circumscribed. The hordes of destitute Greeks could 
not have been greater nor more forlorn had there been a 
wholesale enemy invasion of the Hellenic peninsula. Thou- 
sands of Greeks, living outside of Greece in Bulgaria and 
Turkey, became the objects of cruelest oppression and per- 
secution when, at the beginning of the war, it was decreed 
that every Christian should be driven from Islam at the 
point of the sword. The Twentieth Century reverted 
overnight to the Seventh, the shoddy cloak of tolerance 
fell from the shoulders of Turkey, and the Holy War was 
on as if there had been no surcease. Saladin rode again in 
defense of Acre. 

In 1914 Greece had just emerged from the Balkan struggle 
of 1912-1913 and had acquired by the treaty of Bucharest a 
portion of Eastern Macedonia, an indifferent land, un- 



THE TRAGEDY OF THE EAST 259 

productive, peopled with refugees driven out of Bulgaria, 
or residents whose homes had been laid waste during the 
campaigns of the Balkan wars of those years. It was a 
barren countryside filled with a hungry, clamorous people. 
So Greece already had her refugee problem when the holo- 
caust of Europe took flame ; Belgium, France, and Serbia 
were old stories to her, and the war but served to enhance 
her difficulties. 

The poUtical position of Greece was a peculiar one. We 
are all familiar with the circumstances that led up to the 
abdication of King Constantine and the final decision of 
Greece to enter the war as an allied power in June, 1917. 
These civil disturbances had not served to heighten the 
morale of the people, and at the time of the appeal to the 
American Red Cross, Greece was a sad, tottering, hungry 
land, with swarms of her own people knocking at her gates 
for admittance, demanding shelter and food that she could 
not give. 

Countless stories have come from out of the East in regard 
to Bulgarian and Turkish atrocities, of hordes of women and 
children driven naked across the land, forced to march with- 
out food, clothing, or shelter under the pitiless desert skies — 
of young girls carried off into slavery, of massacres in the 
silent depths of Asia Minor, of Greek children kidnapped by 
the Bulgars and forcibly denationalized, and of countless 
other cruelties too numerous and too terrible to relate. 
Our task there was to salvage the unhappy remainder 
that knocked at our doors, faint with hunger, burning 
with fever, or driven insane by their experiences. 

When, at the close of the year 1917, the Greek Red Cross 
appealed for aid, an American Red Cross representative 
was sent from Saloniki to Athens to consult with the Greek 
Government and the Red Cross, while only a small com- 
mission was sent through the interior to look over the 
field. Of course the usual quota of relief supplies was in 



260 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

order : food, clothing, surgical dressings, and medical needs, 
as well as hospital equipment, sewing machines, and uncut 
materials, hospital bedding, towels, linen, and ambulances. 

There were 50,000 Greek refugees in the islands of the 
iEgean Sea — those beautiful storied islands, lying like 
jewels on the bosom of the bright water, past which the 
Greek fleet had sailed on its way to lUium, past which the 
adventurous Argosy had run, whose shores are cloudy with 
almond blossoms in the spring! These wanderers were 
utterly destitute, having been driven out of Turkey with 
only the few poor rags that covered them. 

In the homeland, the mobilization of the forces had left 
the same economic problems behind as it did in other lands. 
After the Saloniki fire, still more homeless ones thronged 
the streets, while the civilian hospitals were being emptied 
to take care of the wounded. 

But the Red Cross had done so much it could do more. 
In the early emergency, fifty tons of general supplies were 
purchased from the Serbian Commission for use in Mace- 
donia, and at the end of September, 1918, the special Com- 
mission for Greece set out with a personnel of seventy. 
By that time, the whole situation in the Balkans had 
changed for the better : Bulgaria had capitulated ; the 
flag of the Christian had been raised over Jerusalem ; the 
Bed Cross found itself in a more cheerful spiritual atmos- 
phere when the new Commission arrived at Saloniki. This, 
of course, was very close to the end of the war. With the 
obligations of the army removed, the way became at once 
easier and the Red Cross has since been steadily helping 
Greece back to her hearthfires. A good-sized appropriation 
was set aside for the rehabilitation of Greek refugees, while 
arrangements were made for the shipment of 320 tons of 
foodstuffs monthly for a period of three months, coming 
from Italian ports to the Piraeus and the Island of Mitylene. 

In the city of Athens, the children became the special 



THE TRAGEDY OF THE EAST 261 

charge of the Red Cross as they have always been wherever 
the Red Cross has gone. Centers for the care of children 
of employed mothers were opened, and a daily milk ration 
provided for; while sewing rooms were opened not only 
in Athens but on the islands of Chios, Samos, and Mitylene 
in the iEgean Sea and in Serres, Kavalla, and Drama, the 
Macedonian centers of Red Cross work. In addition to 
this, a number of Greek women were given special training 
in care of children and home hygiene, — after the manner 
followed in France, — and by which the trained women in 
the role of visiting practical nurses could take the child 
welfare idea into the Greek homes. The Red Cross was 
also able to go into Bulgarian territory and give some com- 
fort to a number of Greek prisoners in internment camps 
there. 

The Red Cross came late to Greece, perhaps, but more 
than one report says that its presence had a most enlivening 
and heartening effect upon the people. Certainly, owing to 
the circumstances of the country, the Greek agencies were 
unable to handle the sorry situation that confronted them. 
It was fortunate indeed that the Red Cross was able to step 
into the emergency and discharge so well its obligations. 



In April, 1918, the Red Cross War Council received from 
the American Committee for Syrian and Armenian Relief 
the following cablegram which gives a fragmentary picture 
of the conditions which prevailed in Palestine at that time, 
and supplies the reason for the Red Cross' going into the 
Holy Land : — 

Fifteen hundred Armenians, survivors of many thousands exiled from 
Adana, Kharne, Marash, Aintab, Ourfa-Kessab, two and a half years ago, 
to the wilderness east of the Jordan, found trekking to Jericho. For 
months had been compelled by Turks to break stone on roads. Brought 
to Jerusalem in British motor trucks. Although weak and hungry, faces 
lighted up at first glimpse of Mount of Olives. 



262 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

Six thousand Syrian refugees from Es Salt vicinity expected this week. 
We will equip expeditions to meet exiles and will provide industrial relief 
if additional funds can be sent. Five hundred Armenians rescued by 
Arabs at Tawfile, between Maan and Dead Sea, will be moved to Port 
Said. For months from twenty to thirty died daily of starvation. Orig- 
inal number ten thousand. Following message has come through from 
Tawfile : "The price of a life is the price of bread." 

Fortunately for us the British Armies had cleared the 
way. They were at Antioch far to the North, in Jerusalem 
and in Jericho, and were crossing the river Jordan. The 
British Relief Fund for Palestine and Syria had already 
established Medical Units at Gaza, Hebron, Jaffa, and 
Jerusalem and invited the participation of the Red Cross. 
Until the coming of the British Committee, rehef in Pales- 
tine and other near parts of Asia Minor had been in the hands 
of the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Re- 
lief, which had sent $10,000,000 worth of supphes, $3,000,000 
of which had been contributed by the Red Cross prior to 
our active participation in this field. 

So in March, 1918, the special Red Cross Commission 
for Palestine sailed from New York with hundreds of tons 
of supplies and complete traveling and camping equipment. 
The route was long, for travel in the Mediterranean was 
still hazardous and they went around the African con- 
tinent, touching at Ceylon and on through the Red Sea, 
so that it was June before the Mission arrived at the port of 
Beirut. 

The field before them in the Holy Land embraced half the 
measure of Asia. There was no turning back, once begun. 
Although housing and sanitary conditions in that part of 
the world had never been ideal, according to occidental 
standards, there was, fortunately, a more substantial back- 
ground on which to build than there had been at other 
relief points; for one thing, the British engineers were 
engaged in intensive sanitation work in Jerusalem itself, 
and after the fresh waters from the hills had been brought 



THE TRAGEDY OF THE EAST 263 

down to the city by means of modern plumbing and pump- 
ing, the water-skins, filthy though picturesque, disappeared 
from the streets for the first time in two thousand or more 
years. Indeed, permit me to say here, that the work of 
the Red Cross in Palestine was made largely possible through 
the generous and benevolent attitude manifested by the 
British authorities in the occupied enemy territory, and by 
their marvelous and rapid organization and control of the 
civic functions. On the part of the officials there was always 
present the spirit of the most cordial welcome and a generous 
willingness to meet us halfway in all our undertakings. 

The Jerusalem that the Red Cross Commission found was 
a teaming babel, orderly enough under British Army dis- 
cipline, of course ; but it is doubtful if the ancient city with 
so many strange peoples mingling amicably in its streets, 
with heavy British cars and Army camions disturbing the 
calm of the stolid donkeys, the sleepy camels and the wailing 
thousands of refugees — more wretched than those that have 
wept before its walls for a thousand years, and more forlorn 
than the lepers that used to ask alms at the gate — ever 
knew times as stirring or as full of wonderment as these. 
On a Palm Sunday long ago, perhaps, the city had been as 
crowded with surging throngs ; as bewildered and as clamor- 
ous, perhaps, as now in the midsummer of the year of our 
Lord, 1918 ; but that was a very long time ago and Jerusalem 
has slept and dreamed through nearly two thousand sum- 
mers since then, while the world has grown old about it and 
the crescent of the Turk has hung over its gates. 

Therefore it was an unique atmosphere in which the 
Red Cross found itself: the birth-spot of Christ just set 
free from the Saracen, spread over with villages that 
had been villages when Joshua conquered Canaan, when 
Abraham journeyed from the plains of the Jordan down 
into Hebron ; and through which David had passed when 
he was fleeing into the wilderness from Saul — villages that 



264 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

looked for all the world like western Indian pueblo villages, 
clinging old and brown and shapeless to the hills. It would 
be strange, indeed, if a little time was not given to medita- 
tion in a place of such antiquity, surcharged with memories 
that have so vitally influenced the life of the world. One 
can stand on one of the rolling Judean hills and watch the 
shepherds with their flocks in the purple shade of the olive 
trees; two thousand years ago they might have seen the 
Star from that very spot, for Bethlehem lay just across the 
valley. 

But the pressing need, according to all accounts, was for 
action and not meditation. The first relief work under- 
taken was among the homeless refugees, crowded into 
the city of Jerusalem, housed in various odd buildings, 
and tented in the vacant spaces. Strangely enough, among 
them were a number of Russian women pilgrims, stranded 
in Jerusalem by the war, although they are not to be 
classed with the type of refugee that had trudged across 
the Jordan Valley : these were intelligent, clean, hard- 
working, devoutly religious women of fine physique and 
handsome Slav features, who welcomed the advent of the 
Red Cross sewing rooms that were soon opened. 

In the city of Jerusalem fifteen hundred women — Mos- 
lem, Jewish, and Christian — were employed in the indus- 
trial workrooms instituted by the Red Cross, and engaged 
in spinning, weaving, knitting, dressmaking, basketry, rug 
making, mattress making, embroidery, and lace work. The 
Red Cross custom of helping the refugees to help themselves 
has always made for contentment and satisfaction in the sub- 
jects of our aid, giving work to impatient, idle fingers and, 
thereby, assuring them of the type and character of cloth- 
ing they preferred — a f actor_' to be considered if they were 
to attain any measure of happiness. It was familiar things 
they wanted, things to which they had been accustomed, 
things they had known through all their dark narrow lives. 



THE TRAGEDY OF THE EAST 265 

They admire western culture, perhaps, but they do not 
want it — not much of it ; in fact, they are rather afraid of it. 

There were ten refugee centers in the city, two of which 
were on the Mount of Ohves ; there was an orphanage for 
boys, conducted by German agencies before the war and 
which the British desired the Red Cross to take over. Later 
it became necessary to estabhsh another orphanage for boys 
and one for girls. Following the opening of the American 
Red Cross Hospital in the city, there also was established 
a series of clinics for children and adults in the city and in 
four outside centers. Six hundred orphans formerly the 
charges of the British Relief Committee were taken in 
hand, and a liaison was effected with the Zionist Unit for 
the relief of suffering Jews. 

At Port Said, at the head of the Suez Canal just across 
that curve of the land towards the west, where Asia Minor 
ends and Africa begins, a number of Armenian refugees 
were concentrated under the charge of the Red Cross, 
assisted by the Armenian Society and the British Relief 
Fund for Palestine and Syria. 

Refugee work along the foregoing lines was conducted 
in five centers in the Holy Land : in Mejel, where a hospital 
was established; in Remleh, with a clinic supplementing 
the work of the Government hospital ; in Jaffa, a few miles 
west of Jerusalem on the coast; at Ram Allah and at 
Wadi-Surar, in western Palestine, where two thousand or 
more refugees were gathered under tents on the plain. 
Here was also a halfway camp for Armenians being taken 
to Port Said, and a flourishing school of six or seven hundred 
native children. Also, a small civilian hospital was estab- 
lished in Nazareth. In the agricultural districts, and 
Palestine is largely a pastoral land, ox-teams were secured 
for indigent farmers. 

Altogether the field in Palestine was most satisfactory, 
and with the cessation of hostilities and the subsequent 



266 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

opening of the ocean lanes and ports, many problems that 
had existed as decidedly material barriers to the progress 
of relief work have disappeared. All the routes to Asia 
are open now. Supplies can go through and keep on going 
through without cessation. 

For all this work, including food, medical, surgical, and 
sanitary supplies, salaries and expenses, the War Council 
of the Red Cross had appropriated by October 1, $558,479. 
In addition to this, a monthly contribution of $50,000 is 
made to the Red Cross by the Armenian and Syrian Relief 
Committee for the work among the civilian population. 

The end of the war, however, does not mean the end of 
want or the end of suffering or disease in the Holy Land. 
It is a land sunk deep in tradition and superstition and into 
which the light of modern science or modern thought has 
not penetrated ; it is a land that has long suffered oppression 
and cruelty and misunderstanding, where the spirit of the 
peoples has been shrunken and terrified by persecution. 
But in this land the Red Cross has set a bright lamp, and 
we hope it will shine forever, bringing light and hope and 
good will to the old, old lands of the East. 



I 



CHAPTER XX 

RUSSIA 

A Great Problem — Red Gross in Russia in 1917 — Asiatic Fatalism — 
Moscow — Russian Red Gross — Gonditions in Petrograd — Trans- 
Siberian Railway — Loyalty of the Employees — Gzecho-Slovaks — 
The Lost Ghildren of the Urals — Russian Prisoners Released from 
Germany — United States Marines and Infantry in Russia — The 
Brooklyn — Fourteenth Division — Russian Island — Shipments by 
Mountain and Pacific Divisions to San Francisco — $3,500,000 Ap- 
propriated by War Council — Red Gross Equips 360,000 Czecho- 
slovak and Russian Soldiers'*— Moscow and the Red Gross Again — 
New Red Cross Commission — Red Gross Supply Ship— Archangel. 

T is a bolder pen than mine that essays to write of Russia 
_ to-day, even from the standpoint of relief work carried 
on within its borders. Perhaps everything that there is to 
be said of Russia that will convey an idea of its present 
condition — if there be a present condition in a land that is 
constantly changing — has been said. Perhaps everyone 
who reads this will have his own idea of Russia, as nearly 
every one of us has — each of those ideas different, each of 
them short of the truth in varying degrees, for Russia, un- 
consciously, hides herself from those most anxious to under- 
stand her. Those who have been in Russia at any time the 
last three years think they have seen Russia ; almost believe 
that they understand Russia; but they do not. Russia 
is as a kaleidoscope. We look upon to-day's picture and 
say : ''This is Russia !'' and scarcely have the words left our 
lips than there is a change and we discover that what we 
thought was Russia is not Russia at all. It was only a 

267 



268 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

distorted vision. At that, I am most ready to believe and 
not a few who have been there agree with me that the 
workers of the American Red Cross and other rehef agencies 
came closer to that vague, intangible thing that we like to 
speak of poetically as the soul of Russia, than a host of 
others who were never in close touch with the people — 
the common people, the peasants, and the people of the land, 
those teeming millions of the steppes struggling in the dark 
to discover just what the demise of the Romanoffs will mean 
to them. 

Russia is more than a country; it is a world in itself. 
Russia has every imaginable thing that land or water can 
hold in store for the benefit of mankind, and has it in a 
measure that is incalculable : there are fertile wheatlands 
capable of yielding billions of bushels of grain, and mountains 
that are rich in ore, silver, gold, and precious stones that 
have slept there through the ages ; there are valleys gushing 
with oil, vineyards heavy with wine, waters teeming with 
fish, and forests untouched. If ever a land flowed with milk 
and honey, it is Russia — Russia the virgin. 

It was into this country, this Garden of AUadin, shudder- 
ing under the suddenness and swiftness of the revolution 
that the Red Cross went, drawn by the suffering and by 
the needs of the Allied and American forces there — 
(albeit the Red Cross was in Russia before foreign troops 
were sent in). It was an effort to help the affected pop- 
ulation to withstand the stress of the times as best they 
could ; often help of this kind, at such a time, is as efficacious 
as forests of bayonets, although to say so in the Russian 
situation were an exaggeration. Yet, although Russia is 
still in a state of flux, like hot metal that has not found 
its mold, the work of the Red Cross, infinitesimal as it was 
in comparison with the crying need of Russia, has not been 
in vain. The Red Cross could not lead Russia to her destiny, 
but it could hold out a timely flame of hope to the be- 



RUSSIA 269 

wildered, suffering millions that poured through the steppes 
— 12,000,000 they say it was — running away from the 
Frankenstein of their own hands' creating; it could show 
them that human understanding and human kindness still 
existed ; it could point the better way, although it could not 
command. 

When the great army of Russia surged behind the standard 
of the Little Father, up and down Petrograd and the Carpa- 
thians to the frontiers of Prussia and back, see-sawing across 
the land — now driving the foe before them, now giving 
ground without resistance — they left the same wake of 
suffering as did the armies in Belgium, Serbia, and France. 
But it was greater, it was more remote from relief, and it 
was voiceless. The Russian is Asiatic in his fatalism. 
Centuries of oppression have taught him not to complain. 

But overnight, Russia roused from her centuries of 
passivity. The Little Father no longer sat on the great 
throne in Petrograd. The Czar was a hunted exile in his 
own land and Russia was free ! 

It is impossible to tell of the Red Cross in Russia 
without going into the conditions in that country; for 
vague and imperfect though it, obviously, must be, the 
work and policy of the Red Cross were molded and 
limited by the political situation there. Of all theaters 
of operation in which the Red Cross was active, that 
of ancient Moscow may be said to have been the most 
difficult, even if it was the most interesting and, per- 
haps, the most romantic. To appreciate the difficulties 
with which the Red Cross had to contend, the obstacles 
that had to be overcome, one must know or, at least, have 
an idea of Russia at the time. There, the Red Cross 
was confronted by problems heretofore unforeseen, un- 
encountered. That its position was a difficult one will be 
shown by the brief statement that it was a neutral, non- 
combatant relief agency operating in a land whoscs armies 



270 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

were still recognized as part of the Allied forces, a land where 
those who were revolutionists one day were peaceable soil- 
tilling folk the next, or where the stolid peasant of yesterday 
became the cutthroat of to-morrow. It was a situation, to 
say the least, that called for careful diplomacy and great 
delicacy of action. Contrary to the expectations of the 
average Russian, to whom ^'liberty'' and ^ democracy '^ were 
but vague terms, the millennium, as we all know, did not come 
with the dethronement of the Romanoffs. Russia began to 
wander through an evil dream, while her children cried 
for food and the enemy menaced her borders; the Army 
refused to fight ; authority was unrecognized ; the papers of 
one faction were worthless in the eyes of the next. Leaders 
rose and fell, commerce was at a standstill, transportation 
failed ; people cried for that bauble of freedom that they 
thought was within their grasp and killed each other in the 
streets, in misled hope of gaining the much-sought prize 
through bloodshed ; children cried for food and ran home- 
less into the fields. The Brest-Litovsk Treaty went through 
at last. 

Such was Russia — a cauldron, a bedlam, a world of many 
minds with but few who thought they saw the way, and a 
huge remainder doubting, suspecting, fearing, longing only 
for some sort of peace and stability — a few months after 
the outbreak of the revolution, when the American Red 
Cross came. 

Arriving at the port of Vladivostok, late in the month of 
July, 1917, the Commission was met by representatives of 
the Russian Red Cross, which had come through the months 
of turmoil a sorry wreck. Perhaps a few words about the 
Red Cross of Russia will not be amiss here, since the rem- 
nants of that organization were to form an important liaison 
between the Russian people and the foreigners who had 
come to help them. Under the old regime, it had enjoyed 
fair organization^ and had ramified the empire from Petro- 



RUSSIA 271 

grad to the Bering Sea. At the time of the Russo-Japanese 
War, it had thoroughly supplemented the medical corps of 
the armies and had earned the confidence of the people; 
but its very foundation was autocracy and, for this very 
reason, it went down with the fall of the autocrats. In 
February, 1918, the old Central Committee was dissolved 
by force of arms, and its guiding members found little mercy 
at the hands of the revolutionists. However, in the summer 
of 1917, a sincere body of its representatives met the Amer- 
icans at Vladivostok and assured them of their ready cooper- 
ation and assistance wherever it might be needed. In a 
land as strange to Americans as Russia, the need of such 
assistance was obvious and the desire for cooperation un- 
questioned. 

The American Red Cross came to Russia with ambulances 
and $200,000 worth of medical supplies, intending later to 
order vast shipments of medical and surgical needs that were 
to find their way into Russian hospitals. One of the most 
urgent needs was for milk in the cities. The infant mortality 
in those congested spots was increasing each day. There 
were 150,000 homeless, destitute children in Petrograd 
that winter. The food situation was acute, although it 
was largely a matter of transportation rather than actual 
scarcity. However, it became necessary to send food to 
the Russians in the Murmansk district for the reason that 
hungry Petrograd would permit no food to go into that 
barren, frozen land. To the south of the Russian capital 
there were acres and acres of ungarnered grain, while the 
cities cried and fought for bread. A Red Cross appro- 
priation of $20,000 for the relief of officers' and soldiers' 
families in Petrograd was made before the political situa- 
tion became so acute that it was thought best to remove 
the Mission from the capital, which lay under the menace of 
possible German occupation/ In March, 1918, the Mission 
left the city, and with the American Ambassador proceeded 



272 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

to Moscow, leaving one man behind to carry on the milk 
distribution. It became clear that under the existing cir- 
cumstances, with the old capital and the surrounding country 
under the menace of invasion, that the work of the Commission 
was over. The field of action became daily more and more 
circumscribed, yet they stayed on — in Moscow, Murmansk, 
and in Archangel, doing what they could. Although the 
land was in ferment and confusion, somewhere beneath the 
chaos lay Russia reborn. 

There were two utterly unrelated factors that helped 
Russia through the strain of the last two years, factors that 
made many things possible that otherwise would have been 
impossible, one of which gave cause for continued Red Cross 
activity, and the other which made that activity possible — 
two factors on which the face of Russia may be said to have 
depended during that period : the Czecho-Slovaks and the 
Trans-Siberian railway. 

I will speak briefly of the latter first. All through the 
turmoil of the revolution, the great iron way that traverses 
Russia from Vladivostok to Petrograd — 6000 miles — was 
kept going, somehow, and in that fact lies something of 
the quality of the spirit of the real Russia : the employees of 
the railroad yielded to the lure of the freebooters and the 
revolutionists that infested the land less than any other class 
of workers, and it was their loyalty and steadfastness that 
kept the interior of Russia open, for they worked in the 
face of unimaginable difficulties, and enabled supplies to be 
carried from Vladivostok inland. The life of these men was 
one of exceptional hazard. Their families were in want and 
misery ; for months they were unpaid ; yet something made 
them see that the trains had to move if ever hope was to 
come out of the situation at all. The psychology of this 
vision, this urge on the part of these loyal Russian laboring 
men, will forever remain a mystery. It was something of 
the real Russia, the Russia that is worth while, the Russia 



RUSSIA 273 

that will finally triumph. At that, I do not mean to convey 
the impression that the Trans-Siberian was a perfectly 
running, perfectly managed road. Far from it. To begin 
with, the rolling stock was old and dilapidated, the engines 
badly in need of repair and fuel was scarce; nor did they 
run on schedule time, breakdowns being the rule rather 
than the exception; but they ran, somehow, the trains 
from Vladivostok inland, and it was through this medium 
that Red Cross supplies were taken into Russia. 

And the Czecho-Slovaks : Czech soldiers had been in 
Siberia since June, having joined the French and British 
forces in the field. The care of the wounded became an 
obligation of the Red Cross, while the American consul at 
Harbin, in Manchuria, was asking for cooperation with 
the Russian Red Cross there to take care of the refugees 
coming in along the routes of the Trans-Siberian Railway. 
The misery of the tumult was breaking out in a new place. 
Around the Czecho-Slovaks there was rallying a formidable 
force of Russians, and the port of Vladivostok, with its 
vast quantities of supplies which Sukhomlinoff had kept 
from the Russian armies, was now in Allied control. A 
crisis was imminent. Russia wanted peace and safety 
wherever she might find it : she would take it from Germany 
if the Allies could not produce it the more quickly. In the 
meantime, suffering increased and the cities, though in the 
midst of plenty, were still in the grip of famine — the 
peasants refusing to give up their grain at Government 
prices, when they could sell it in the open market for its weight ' 
in gold. Food commissions, created by the soviet govern- 
ment, were sent into the farming regions, there to wrest the 
food from the peasants by force, if they could obtain it no 
other way. Children from the breadless cities were sent 
into the country, thrown upon the charity of the peasants 
for their food. Some months later 1200 of these ^Uost 
children of the Urals" were corralled by the Red Cross in 



274 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

Tumen and Irbit and brought back from savagery to normal 
life. The number of children who died in the wilderness 
will never be known. 

And so, as in Italy the previous autumn, the Red Cross 
went 'Ho war'' — it having been decided not to send, at 
least for the present, an American Army to Russia — to hold 
the Russians to the cause of right and save her from that 
greater chaos that wholesale enemy occupation would 
precipitate ; kindness and the relief of pressing needs in the 
way of food, clothing, and shelter was the means by which 
she was to be won to the Allies' cause. 

Meanwhile, across the German frontiers, Russian pris- 
oners released from bondage in enemy prison camps — in 
some instances of four years' duration — were pouring by 
the thousands back into a Russia they did not know, a 
Russia that had come into being while they were rotting 
in captivity, a Russia that would flay them and try their 
hearts anew before granting them the peace for which 
they had fought. A large proportion of these men were 
ill and wasted physically. Many of them were tuberculotic. 

The needs of the newly released Russian prisoners offered 
an opportunity to bring home by clear, practical demon- 
stration, the fact that the Red Cross had come there to help 
them. Fortunately, our men were able to get a Government 
chartered ship, in which a load of food supplies, medicines, 
and drugs was soon on its way. 

Encouragement, also, came at that time from the fact 
that the call of the United States Consul at Harbin could 
be answered and was now going forward for the relief of the 
refugees there. There were swarms of them — a heteroge- 
neous mass of bewildered folk, ranging from the unkempt 
mendicant classes to unfortunate families who had known 
comfort and prosperity — Russians, Tartars, dark, round- 
eyed children from the Balkans and Armenia, and wailing 
Serbs, utterly destitute and forlorn. 



RUSSIA 275 

From the beginning, the purpose of the Red Cross was to 
help the people of Russia without regard to political situa- 
tions, and with utter indifference to the policies of the 
political party that happened to be in power. Its aim was 
to keep clearly before the Russians the fact that the United 
States, through the Red Cross, wanted to help them. Yet 
the picture of Russia is a difficult one to paint, so many vital 
things were happening simultaneously. It was while the 
relief ship was preparing for northern Russia that a new and 
keenly urgent situation arose in the Far East : the Czecho- 
slovaks had developed a new theater of war and stubborn 
fighting was going on along the railway lines in Siberia and 
along the Volga. Light was beginning to filter through upon 
a state of things which three months before had been hope- 
lessly black. By July 15, 1918, one year after the Red 
Cross had come to Russia, United States Marines and regulars 
were landing at the Russian ports; the Marines at Kola 
on the Murmansk front ; and Infantry from the Philippines 
at Vladivostok. Allied forces were in that city guarding 
the stores, and the Czecho-Slovak wounded were moving 
back over the railway in increasing numbers into hospitals al- 
ready filled to overflowing. The United States cruiser Brook- 
lyrij lying in Vladivostok harbor, was temporarily converted 
into a floating hospital, aboard which the Czechs were 
taken. Civilian conditions among the refugees driven back 
from the fighting zone were growing steadily worse. 

However, in the present emergency, as always, the letters 
from the Navy and State Departments and the cables 
received by the Red Cross were turned over to the Four- 
teenth Division, and the ball was rolling before the ink on 
the letters was fairly dry. The Secretary of the Navy cabled 
to the Commander of the Brooklyn that relief was on the 
way. It was a day and a week of the swiftest direct action 
and one in which the Fourteenth Division played one of its 
most conspicuous parts. 



276 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

The physician in charge of St. Luke's Hospital in Tokyo 
was summoned by cable to take charge of the situation in 
Vladivostok at the head of a relief expedition^ while the 
representative of the Russian Department of Commerce at 
Vladivostok was requested to oversee all preparations until 
the expedition should arrive. It was perhaps the most 
urgent and most vital emergency work that the year had 
exacted of the Red Cross, in a year filled with vital emer- 
gencies. There was fast work, too, in Tokyo and in Vladi- 
vostok. The Peking Chapter was accumulating supplies, 
while money poured in from Americans in Shanghai, Tient- 
sin, and Harbin. In Tokyo, the assembling of the hospital 
unit was hastened, and in eight days the staff with their 
supplies landed in Vladivostok ready for work. 

Out of all this energy grew the American Red Cross relief 
base at Vladivostok. On Russian Island — a dot of land 
two and a half miles out in the harbor, commanding a 
beautiful view of the busy ship-dotted bay and the broad, 
blue sweep of the Sea of Japan — the military hospital was 
located in buildings already there. There grew up, too, in an 
incredibly short time, refugee barracks at First and Second 
Rivers, near the city, capable of housing 2000 people, with 
soup kitchens, sewing rooms, laundries, and clinics. The 
sewing rooms gave employment to hundreds of refugee 
women who were able and eager to make garments if the 
material was provided. Sanitary trains were equipped to 
accompany the Czech army into the interior and a rolling 
canteen and a station canteen were set up between Harbin 
and the forward lines, in which many American women cheer- 
fully volunteered their services. 

The Far East, alarmed at having the war suddenly 
brought so near, was thrilled at the spirit of cooperation 
that quickly put things into action. The Americans were 
at last in the great game, and the war and the Red Cross 
had come three-quarters of the way around the world to 



RUSSIA 277 

them. The great drama was being played on their very 

doorsteps. 

It was August and the beginning of the Siberian winter 
was but ten weeks away. Refugees were still coming in, 
especially from the district east of Lake Baikal, pouring 
across the Siberian steppes to the Pacific coast where the 
mnter was a bit milder. A few well-to-do Russians in 
Harbin and Vladivostok volunteered financial help and the 
Russian Red Cross still stood by ready to render what assist- 
ance it could. The food and clothing survey held small 
hope of the possibiHty of being able to cope with the needs 
of the coming season, and heavy winter underclothing, 
overcoats, shoes, and uniforms were needed for 75,000 Czech 
troops. 

There was no agency to meet this demand except the Red 
Cross, and again the Chapter machinery was set in motion. 
Within a few days, quantities of knitted garments made by 
the women of the Mountain and Pacific Divisions were 
moving out of San Francisco harbor. This shipment in- 
cluded 250,000 pairs of socks and 250,000 sweaters. From 
New York came a shipment of a quantity of underclothing 
and mittens and 150,000 pairs of shoes, donated by the 
Russian Embassy at Washington for distribution by the Red 
Cross in Russia. An appropriation of $3,500,000 was made 
by the Red Cross War Council to carry on this momentous 
work of relief. 

Some idea of the speed with which this work went for- 
ward may be had when one reahzes that, despite the distance 
from the base of suppUes and the broad and diversified 
program of the Red Cross in Siberia, the refugee work in 
Vladivostok was well in hand by the middle of August. 
Red Cross had in its charge 4000 children and 60,000 adults 
scattered through that corner of Manchuria around the city 
of Harbin, where the Manchu territory seems to jut up into 
Siberia. There were fourteen American and seven Japanese 



278 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

doctors in the hospitals, assisted by American, Japanese, 
and Chinese nurses. Fifty additional nurses and as many 
physicians were summoned. Altogether, quite a plant was 
growing up in Vladivostok. It was assuming the aspects 
of an industry. The whole nature of the old Siberian port 
had undergone a change — a relief center with its streets 
now filled with refugees from all points of Russia, soldiers in 
strange uniforms, and its hospitals filled with the wounded 
of foreign armies. 

Incidentally no one failed to speak of the Japanese in 
terms of the highest praise. Their cooperation in the 
relief situation is said to have been magnificent. There 
was nothing they could do to help that was not eagerly and 
promptly done. 

In time, the tide of war changed. Success followed the 
sword of the valiant Czechs, and early in September the 
Red Cross was called upon to furnish incidental equipment 
for 360,000 Russian and Czech soldiers, while the Czech 
commander asked the Red Cross to take entire charge of the 
army medical service, with the request for 100 specialists, 
nurses, and dentists. From Russian sources came new stories 
of need beyond Baikal for clothing, farm tools, kerosene, 
window glass, and general household items, all through the 
devastated regions, left bare by the retreating revolutionists. 
It seemed that the Russian situation was no sooner in hand 
than new situations sprang up. For such circumstances, 
the Red Cross must always be ready. The success of the 
Czech forces had great moral effect on the vacillating 
Russians. Thousands of them rallied around the victorious 
Czech banner, and in the heart of Russia the world's fortune 
once more swung in fine balance. Supplies for the use of 
the American troops were coming in from the United States, 
and there went into the interior a quantity of Red Cross 
supplies based on the requirements of 10,000 men and a 
500-bed hospital. 




AN AMERICAN RED CROSS DENTAL STATION IN SERBIA, THREE 
QUARTERS OF A MILE FROM THE FRONT LINE TRENCHES. 



RUSSIA 279 

In the meantime, chaos was having its fling in Moscow and 
the city found itself cut off from northern Russia, facing the 
winter without food, fuel, oil, or wool, and very little clothing. 
Moscow the luxurious was perishing; people fell in the 
streets from hunger. Soldiers were breaking into the homes 
and stripping them of all valuables and metals ; telephone 
service was cut off ; street transportation ceased ; only blood 
and tumult from day's end to day's end remained, while in 
the slow Russian mind the fear that they had been tricked 
began to dawn. 

Hanging on in the midst of all this misgovernment were 
the Red Cross men of the original commission who had 
remained despite the fact that spectators in Moscow could 
see no hope for Russia's regeneration, and irrespective of 
the orders from the United States Department of State for 
all Americans, official or otherwise, to leave Soviet Russia. 
Part of the Mission had drifted through Finland, and thence 
back to the Archangel district where American troops were 
in action ; others started down the Volga Valley to see what 
the Czechs were doing ; everywhere they found not only a 
visible lack of necessities at all bases of supply but infinite 
difficulty to be overcome before supplies could be transported 
to the needy quarters. While the Red Cross workers in 
European Russia were doing what little circumstances would 
permit, and while the high-speed relief work was going on in 
Vladivostok, a Red Cross ship laden with supplies was 
making its way to Archangel with food, medicines, and all 
manner of needs for the soldiers and civilians of north Russia 
and a new Red Cross Commission was ordered there to oper- 
ate with the Allied and American troops that were fighting 
their way south, to effect a junction with the Czechs with the 
help of the reconstituted Russian forces. So much, at any 
rate, of the miUtary situation must needs be told, in order to 
make the picture of Red Cross work in Russia clear. Half 
the time, it was like working in a bad dream. Unforeseen 



280 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

emergencies constantly arose, apparently insurmountable 
barriers continually presented themselves. Difficult enough 
is the work of relief in time of calamity and of war when 
the affected population is ready and able to cooperate, but in 
Russia, menaced by the constant threat of invasion from the 
west and the revolutionists that placed every possible obstacle 
in the path of law and order, it became a question of helping 
Russia in spite of herself; and never had the Red Cross 
endeavored to carry out its purpose in the midst of such 
adverse circumstances. 

By October, the new Commission for north Russia was 
taking hold of the situation, and the Red Cross supply 
ship had reached port just in time to relieve the food con- 
ditions in Petrograd, where with the Siberian, Volga, and 
Ukranian food supplies cut off, starvation again threatened 
— if it had ever been wholly overcome. Fifty-seven per 
cent of the school children were sick — in some districts 
as high as eighty-seven per cent ; infant mortality had risen 
to fifty per cent and degeneration, riot, and death were wide- 
spread. The city^s social welfare society had 70,000 cases 
on its inadequate hands, many of them homeless school 
children. Typhus appeared in the city. 

With each day bringing winter nearer, the Red Cross, 
in addition to its regular relief work about the base at 
Archangel, launched expeditions into hitherto unreached 
parts of the district. A Russian trawler loaded with food 
and medical supplies went along the White Sea coast of the 
Kola peninsula where the inhabitants, in virtual isolation, 
were facing starvation and suffering with scurvy and other 
diseases caused by undernourishment. Later, ''anti- 
typhus'^ trains financed by the Allied powers, and equipped 
and managed by the Red Cross, made regular runs through 
the typhus infested regions. 

So the Red Cross knocked at the heart of Russia, working 
steadfastly through the terrible cold, giving impartially and 



RUSSIA 281 

with largesse. I cannot but feel that the problem faced 
and solved so well under the most trying circumstances was 
an unique one, and that in Russia, above all other places, 
the Red Cross proved its worth in time of need as easily as 
it demonstrated its abihty to organize and act at a moment's 
notice. Through it all it has kept faith with itself and with 
those whom it has served, and at all times it has been deeply 
appreciative of the ready and eJBfective cooperation of other 
agents in the field — the Red Cross societies of Great Britain 
and Japan, the Russian and Czech Army Medical Corps, 
the AUied Prisoners Commission of a somewhat late date ; 
and finally, but not the least, the warm responsive welcome 
of the Russian Red Cross and the Russian people. 



CHAPTER XXI 

THE LEAGUE OF EED CROSS SOCIETIES 

The Armistice — Demobilization — Conference with President Wilson 
— Formation of the League of Red Cross Societies — Appointment 
of Chairman and Other Officers — Conference at Cannes of Medical 
Experts — Program of the League of Red Cross Societies. 

LOOKING back, as I begin my last chapter, I realize 
that what I have written about the various spheres of 
Red Cross activities in Europe must seem unsatisfactory if 
not obscure and meager. Especially is this the case in the 
chapters which relate to Russia and the Near East where, 
perhaps, the lack of concrete details is more marked than 
anywhere else. In fairness to myself it should be said, 
however, that I have endeavored to refer to every important 
incident which came to the knowledge of the War Council 
from those distant countries; and, therefore, the blame, 
if blame there be, should rest rather on the very nature of 
the undertaking, which made it inevitable that not a few of 
the splendid efforts of our relief agencies should fail to attain 
their rightful place in our annals in Washington. 

Thus far, patently, my task has been to deal solely with 
the activities of the Red Cross in the stress of war ; but the 
time has now come when I have to concern myself with the 
peace efforts of the Red Cross which, despite any opinion to 
the contrary, must be regarded as scarcely second in impor- 
tance if not more difficult than those of war. As a matter 
of fact, it is becoming every day more and more apparent that 
our foreign problem, and our home problem as well, not only 

282 



THE LEAGUE OF RED CROSS SOCIETIES 283 

'did not end but rather began when the bugles sang truce 
across the battlefields. 

In that infinitesimal second before the guns were suddenly 
quiet the whole war effort of America was at its height. Of 
the intense drama of that moment only the soldiers at the 
scene can tell; and they are strangely silent. To them, 
however, it brought a laying down of arms and a marching 
down to rest billets ; to the women of the world it brought 
a prayer ; while to the Red Cross it marked an end and a 
beginning — a visible end, at least, to everything connected 
with actual warfare, and a beginning of the fulfillment of 
its obligations to aid the feet of humanity in struggling along 
the pathway of enduring peace. 

There can be no gainsaying the fact, either, that on the 
day of the armistice the Red Cross was doing its part and 
extending its efforts to the utmost. The home office at 
Washington, visioning months of activity ahead of it, was 
one of the busiest places in the National Capitol; food 
supplies were going forward to all parts of the world, and 
production was approaching its crest; the men of our 
foreign commissions were in action or going into action in 
all the war-scarred lands; and, specifically and most im- 
portant of all perhaps, the Red Cross Commission in Paris, 
having just completed a thorough reorganization of its nine 
thousand loyal members, was equipped to render maximum 
service to our own army under whatever conditions the 
future exigencies of the war might develop. 

In view of this great concentration of relief work at the 
time of the cessation of hostilities, it would be folly to suppose 
that the Red Cross, like the soldiers, could lay down its arms 
at once. Far from it. Even if we had desired to follow 
such a course, attainment was impossible because of the 
tremendous impetus behind us. 

Nevertheless, little by little the thoughts of all mankind 
began to turn to peace and the reconstruction of the world, 



284 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

and it behooved the Red Cross to adjust itself to the new 
conditions. As a consequence, therefore, and after con- 
sultation with the heads of its European commissions, the 
War Council proceeded to take up the exceedingly complex 
question as to how the Red Cross might complete the per- 
formance of its war obligations and yet, at the earliest 
moment, transfer its effort to the peace organization — by 
no means a small undertaking, when one takes into con- 
sideration the fact that the armistice left the great organi- 
zation intact, with all its energies a-tingle, and all its unspent 
resources free. 

But, be that as it may, consistent with the results aimed 
at, there followed a cutting-down of production and a 
gradual diminishing of Red Cross work in the actual war 
areas; while an appreciable reduction took place in the 
personnel everywhere, particularly in the ranks of the vol- 
unteer war-workers who, naturally, were compelled to 
return to their vocations as soon as possible. Furthermore, 
it was decided at a conference between the President and the 
War Council that they should retire, and March 1 was set 
as the date on which the Executive Committee would be- 
come, as before the war, the permanent directing body of 
the American Red Cross. In this connection it gives me 
great pleasure to state that it was most fortunate for all 
concerned that Dr. Livingston Farrand was, finally, pre- 
vailed upon to accept the chairmanship of this committee. 

But all the while that this transfer from a war-time to a 
peace-time basis was taking place, not a few of those who 
had followed Red Cross effcq-t during the war were deeply 
impressed with the idea that it was their duty not to suffer 
the slightest diminution of the humanitarian spirit which 
the war had aroused in the American people for their fellow- 
beings throughout the world ; that it was nothing more nor 
less than an obligation on the part of the American Red 
Cross to make certain that the results of its experience 



THE LEAGUE OF RED CROSS SOCIETIES 285 

during the war should be placed at the disposal of the other 
Red Cross societies of the world, and vice versa. 

Hence, when I presented the idea of adopting a peace-time 
program of Red Cross activity to President Wilson, presi- 
dent of the Red Cross, he grasped at once its vast impor- 
tance and asked me to concentrate my efforts towards 
formulating some plan which would accomplish the purpose 
so much to be desired. Accordingly, soon after this in- 
terview I went to Europe where I called into conference 
the Red Cross societies of the more important countries 
with a view of developing a plan of coordination and 
cooperation. It did not take them long to recognize how 
vitally important it was for the future of the world that 
the Red Cross should have a peace-time function; yet 
nowhere, I am glad to say, was this more quickly and 
clearly realized than in the council chamber where 
President Wilson, M. Clemenceau, and Premiers Lloyd 
George and Orlando met daily to draw up the final treaty. 
They saw, as did every student of the situation, that 
there could be no peace until the peoples were able to 
enjoy peace of mind as well as peace of body; that no set 
of men could establish with pencil and paper a peace which 
could endure unless the distress throughout the world could 
be relieved. And so it came about that in the revised 
Covenant of the League of Nations there was inserted the 
following paragraph as Article XXV : — 

"The members of the League agree to encourage and promote the 
establishment and cooperation of duly authorized, voluntary, national 
Red Cross organizations having as their pxu"pose the improvement of 
health, prevention of disease, and mitigation of suffering throughout the 
world." 

And, indeed, as a whole it was a wretched world, a ragged, 
frightened, helpless world with so little to rebuild with and so 
little to cling to. Perhaps it thought that the transition to 
peace would be easy ; perhaps it did not fully grasp the extent 



286 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

of the wastage of the last five years ; perhaps it did not realize 
the hunger and pestilence and dearth that war had engen- 
dered. On the other hand, nothing but the armed conflict 
of half the world could have aroused the people to the pos- 
sibilities of the Red Cross; nothing but the agony caused 
by the destruction of all the factors of existence — houses 
and bridges, roads and fields and, in a sense, even life itself 
— could have shown the need of a universal organization for 
the promotion of good will wherever human life exists. In 
a word, these thoughts, far easier to feel than to express, 
united to form the idea of the League of Red Cross Societies 
which, with Article XXV of the League of Nations as a sort 
of international charter, came formally into being in Paris, 
May 5, 1919. There were present delegates from the 
Red Cross organizations of the United States, Great Britain, 
France, Italy, and Japan, whose representatives constitute 
the board of governors, of which board I was chosen chair- 
man, and by which Sir David Henderson was appointed 
director-general. At a later date Professor William Rap- 
pard, of the University of Geneva, became secretary- 
general. 

Invitations to join the league have been issued to the Red 
Cross societies of the following countries : Argentina, 
Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chili, China, Cuba, 
Denmark, Greece, Holland, India, New Zealand, Norway, 
Peru, Portugal, Rumania, Serbia, South Africa, Spain, 
Sweden, Switzerland, 'Uruguay, and Venezuela. Eventually, 
of course, it is confidently expected that every nation in the 
world will have a representative in the League of Red Cross 
Societies which, already, has begun to function at its estab- 
lished headquarters in Geneva. At this point, therefore, 
if only to avoid any misunderstanding, I think it advisable 
to state authoritatively that while the relations between 
the League of Red Cross Societies and the League of Nations 
will be of an intimate character there will be no statuary 




< 
O 



THE LEAGUE OF RED CROSS SOCIETIES 287 

connection, since the League of Red Cross Societies is 
essentially a voluntary organization, non-political, non- 
governmental, and non-sectarian. 

But even while the League of Red Cross Societies was 
in process of formation, there was practically no limit to 
the reports, which came from every quarter of Europe and 
Asia, that the distress was beyond computation; that the 
vitality of whole nations had been lowered almost to the 
death point ; that entire populations were without clothing ; 
and that it was certain that there would be a shortage of 
fuel and food at the approach of winter. At best, it was a 
situation so appalling that the governments alone could 
handle it satisfactorily, even if the governments did only 
the major part of the work, leaving the minor part to the 
voluntary organizations. And in view of all this it may be 
pertinent to give here the objects of the League of Red 
Cross Societies as set forth in the articles of association : — 

1. To encourage and promote in every country in the world the 
establishment and development of duly authorized voluntary national 
Red Cross organizations, having as their purpose the improvement of 
health, prevention of disease, and mitigation of suffering throughout the 
world, and to secure the cooperation of such organizations for these 
purposes. 

2. To promote the welfare of mankind by furnishing the medium for 
bringing within the reach of all peoples the benefits to be derived from 
present known facts and new contributions to science and medical knowl- 
edge and their application. 

3. To furnish the medium for coordinating relief work in case of great 
national or international calamities. 

As will readily be seen the plan as adopted here, taken 
as a whole, is a conception which involves not merely 
efforts to relieve human suffering but purposes to pre- 
vent it; to relieve not the suffering of one people alone 
but an attempt to arouse all peoples to a sense of 
their responsibility for the welfare of their fellow-beings 
throughout the world. But vast as is the scope of the 



V, 



288 THE AMERICA:Nf RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

program of the League of Red Cross Societies, its ap- 
plication, nevertheless, is simple, practical, and scientific. 
It could hardly be otherwise since it received the unanimous 
indorsement of an unique gathering of medical experts who 
at the invitation of the Red Cross met at Cannes, France, 
in April, 1919. This conference, by the way, was presided 
over by Professor Roux, the successor in Paris of Pasteur, 
and Dr. William H. Welch, of Johns Hopkins University, 
and also included many of the foremost men of America, 
France, England, Italy, and Japan. All in all it was regarded 
as one of the most remarkable gatherings of health experts 
ever held. 

These experts adopted at the conference a minute de- 
claring that a great part of the world-wide prevalence of 
disease and suffering is due to widespread ignorance and 
lack of application of well-established facts and methods 
capable either of largely restricting disease or preventing 
it. ^'Altogether we have carefully considered,'^ the minute 
asserts, 'Hhe general purpose of the Committee of the Red 
Cross Societies to spread light of science and warmth of 
human sympathy into every corner of the world; and we 
are confident that this movement, assured as it is at the out- 
set of the moral support of civilization, has in it great pos- 
sibilities of adding immeasurably to the happiness and wel- 
fare of mankind.'' That statement represents the judgment 
of men who are qualified to speak with the highest authority 
on the subject of the great scourges of humanity, such as 
tuberculosis, malaria, venereal diseases, and epidemics; 
men who are authorities on preventive medicine and who 
represent the knowledge of the world in the great field of 
child welfare. It is their belief, based on certain scientific 
knowledge, acquired by practical experience, that these 
scourges can be controlled, or even eliminated, by organized, 
coordinated effort and cooperation. Moreover, regarding 
the proposed plans, the consensus of these experts was that 



THE LEAGUE OF RED CROSS SOCIETIES 289 

they should be put into effect and placed at the disposal of 
the world at the earliest possible moment. They, also, 
claimed that in no way can the work be done so effectively 
as through the agency of the Red Cross. 

Through its headquarters at Geneva, the League of Red 
Cross Societies plans to stimulate peace-time activities of 
all National Red Cross Societies, and to help them to grow 
and to carry out the program of the Cannes conference for 
a world-wide public health campaign. It is not the thought 
that the National Red Cross Societies themselves should 
have the responsibilities of the actual work of safeguarding 
and improving public health, but that each society should 
stimulate and encourage the natural agencies for such work 
within their respective countries, including the departments 
of health of their governments; and in cases where such 
departments do not exist, the societies should endeavor 
to create public sentiment for the establishment of such 
departments. 

Another point to be noted is that the League of Red Cross 
Societies will supplement the work of the International 
Committee of the Red Cross of Geneva, acting in harmony 
with it; in no way will it supersede, absorb, or conflict 
with the activities of national societies, but on the contrary 
it will put at their disposal the latest knowledge and ap- 
proved practices of experts in public health and preventive 
medicines throughout the world. In all probability its 
immediate functions will be to coordinate relief work in 
combating pestilence such as typhus. 

In conclusion, I wish to say that actual experience has 
demonstrated beyond all doubt that the people of all 
nations are quick and eager to seize and act upon knowledge 
that leads to increased happiness. It would seem, therefore, 
that the far-reaching effects of the program of the League 
of Red Cross Societies may be measured by the suffering 
which exists and which it purposes to relieve. Hand in 



290 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE GREAT WAR 

hand with the world campaign for the betterment of public 
health will go the improvement of social and economic 
conditions of humanity, and a protective union, as it were, 
with all working together in a spirit of kindly consideration 
and cooperation for the common good. Surely this spirit 
of service among the peoples cannot fail to develop a new 
fraternity and sympathy to a degree not dreamed of hitherto ; 
sm-ely the League of Red Cross Societies has a glorious 
future in the field of human kindness ahead of it. 



APPENDIX 

THE STORY IN FIGURES 

THE Red Cross War Council was appointed May 10, 
1917. It went out of existence on February 28th, 

1919. 

The First War Fund Drive for $100,000,000 was held 
in the week June 18 to June 25, 1917, and resulted in reported 
subscriptions of approximately $114,000,000. The Second 
War Fund Drive was held in the week May 18 to May 25, 
1918, and resulted in reported subscriptions of approximately 
$170,000,000. Under the lanancial plan. Chapters were 
permitted to withdraw 25 per cent of their collections against 
War Funds, the remaining 75 per cent being at the disposal 
of the Red Cross War Council. 

Up to the conclusion of the administration of the War 
Council there had been collected against the two War 
Funds a total of approximately $283,599,000, of which 
$229,799,000 had been credited to National Headquarters 
and $53,800,000 withdrawn by Chapters. 

As the figures show, the total revenues of National Head- 
quarters and Chapters for the twenty months ending Feb- 
ruary 28, 1919, were $400,178,000, and during that period 
the total expenditures amounted to $272,676,000. Thus 
when the War Council turned over the affairs of the Red 
Cross to its Executive Committee, the permanent adminis- 
trative body, the total resources of the National Head- 
quarters amounted to $110,756,000. This money was 
represented by supphes held in the United States and over- 
seas valued at $48,678,000; cash advances amounting to 
$12,834,000, and current assets amounting to $52,606,000. 
Against the foregoing assets there were appropriations, which 
had not been expended and yet which constituted an obliga- 

291 



292 APPENDIX 

tion, amounting to $16,714,000. Thus the total net resources 
of National Headquarters were $94,042,000. 

On the same date the balance in the hands of Chapters 
amounted to $33,460,000. 

The accounts of the Red Cross are audited by the War 
Department and the full report is annually submitted to 
Congress. Details of receipts and expenditures of course 
are covered by these audited reports, which, however, only 
cover the period of successive fiscal years. The figures 
given below cover the finances of the Red Cross for the period 
during which the War Council was in control of its affairs. 

AMERICAN NATIONAL RED CROSS 

Revenues 
Twenty Months Ending February 28^ 1919 
National Headquaeters — 
'First War Drive Collections ... $ 92,947,000.00 
Second War Drive Collections . . 136,852,000.00 

Membership Dues 18,930,000.00 

Donations of Surplus Funds from 

Chapters 1,420,000.00 

Interest 3,157,000.00 

Other Revenues 6,697,000.00 

Total Revenues — National 

Headquarters $260,003,000.00 

Add — Fund Balance, June 30, 1917 3,135,000.00 $263,138,000.00 

Chapters — 
Chapters' Proportion of War Drives $ 53,800,000.00 
Chapters' Proportion of Membership 

Dues 18,440,000.00 

Chapters' Proportion of Class Fees 390,000.00 

Sales of Materials to Members for 

Relief Articles 20,290,000.00 

Contributions, Legacies, Gifts . . 9,580,000.00 

All Other Revenue 31,340,000.00 

Total Revenues — Chapters . $133,840,000.00 
Add — Balance, June 30, 1917 . . 3,200,000.00 ,; $137,040,000.00 
Total Revenues — National Headquarters and 
Chapters $400,178,000.00 



APPENDIX 293 

AMERICAN NATIONAL RED CROSS 

Expenditures 
Tvjenty Months Ending February 28, 1919 

National Headquarters — 

War Relief in France $57,207,000.00 

War Relief Elsewhere Overseas . . 63,841,000.00 
War Relief in United States . . . 28,978,000.00 

Disaster Relief 939,000.00 

Collections, Enrollments and Publi- 
cations 4,660,000.00 

Operation of Relief Bureaus . . . 2,727,000.00 
Operation of Bureaus for Handling 
Relief Supplies, also, Transporta- 
tion in United States of Relief 

Supplies 5,530,000.00 

Operation of Administrative Bureaus 
at National and Divisional Head- 
quarters 4,360,000.00 

Other Activities 854,000.00 

Total National Headquarters $169,096,000.00 

Chapters — 
Materials Purchased for Relief 

Articles $60,660,000.00 

Canteen Service 2,320,000.00 

Equipment of Military Hospitals, 

Ambulances, etc 3,070,000.00 

Home Service 8,790,000.00 

Miscellaneous War Relief .... 480,000.00 
Spanish Influenza Epidemic Relief 

Work 1,680,000.00 

Disaster Relief 520,000.00 

Public Health Nursing 380,000.00 

Transportation of Materials and 

Supplies 290,000.00 

General Operating Expenses . . . 7,490,000.00 

All Other Expenditures 17,900,000.00 

Total Chapters $103,580,000.00 

Total Expenditures — National Headquarters 
and Divisions $272,676,000.00 



294 APPENDIX 

AMERICAN NATIONAL RED CROSS 

Resources 

February 28, 1919 

National Headquarters — 
Supplies — 

In United States $27,698,000. 

Overseas 20,980,000. 

Total . $48,678,000. 

Cash Advances — (To Provide Working Capital) 

Overseas Commissions $ 9,509,000. 

Divisions in United States .... 2,994,000. 
Miscellaneous 331,000. 

Total $12,834,000. 

Current Assets — 

Cash in Banks $19,063,000. 

Cash and Securities in Hands of War 

Finance Committee 31,703,000. 

Securities Owned 1,206,000. 

Bills Receivable 3,000. 

Miscellaneous Accounts Receivable . 631,000. 

Total $52,606,000. 

Less — Accounts Payable 3,362,000. 

$49,244,000. 

Total Resources Nat. Hdqrs. (Exc. End. Fund) . $110,756,000. 

Less — Amount Obligated by Appro- 
priations but not Expended 
on February 28, 1919 16,714,000. 

Net Resources National Headquarters (Ex- 
cluding Endowment Fund) $ 94,042,000. 

Chapters — 

Balance February 28, 1919 33,460,000. 

Total Resources (Excluding Endowment Fund) $127,502,000. 



APPENDIX 295 

Endowment Fund 

Balance July 1, 1917 $ 1,361,000. 

Add — Revenues 20 Months to February 

28, 1919 1,072,000. 

Total $ 2,433,000. 

Less — Income Payments to National 

Organization, A.R.C 106,000. 

Balance — February 28, 1919 . . $ 2,327,000. 

The following statistics may also be of interest. They 
represent the great volume of production and work which 
the American Red Cross undertook both at home and 
abroad : — 

Red Cross members : adult, 20,000,000 ; children, 

11,000,000 31,000,000 

Red Cross workers 8,100,000 

Relief articles produced by volunteer workers 371,577,000 ^ 

Families of soldiers and sailors aided by Home Service in 

the United States 500,000 

Refreshments served by canteen workers in U. S. . . . 40,000,000 
Nurses enrolled for service with Army or Navy or Red 

Cross 23,822 

Kinds of comfort articles distributed to soldiers and 

sailors in U. S 2,700 

Knitted articles given to soldiers and sailors in United 

States 10,900,000 

Tons of relief supplies shipped overseas 101,000 

Foreign countries in which the Red Cross operated ... 25 

Patient days in Red Cross hospitals in France .... 1,155,000 

French hospitals given material aid 3,780 

* Representing : Surgical dressings 306,967,000 

Hospital garments . 17,462,000 

Hospital supplies 14,211,000 

Refugee garments 6,329,000 

Articles for soldiers and sailors . . . 23,329,000 

Unclassified 3,279,000 

Total 371,577,000 



296 APPENDIX 

Splints supplied for American soldiers 294,000 

Gallons of nitrous oxide and oxygen furnished hospitals in 

France 4,340,000 

Men served by Red Cross canteens in France .... 15,376,000 

Refugees aided in France 1,726,000 

American convalescent soldiers attending Red Cross 

movies in France 3,110,000 

Soldiers carried by Red Cross ambulances in Italy . . . 148,000 

Children cared for by Red Cross in Italy . . ... . 155,000 



INDEX 



^gean Sea, Red Cross work on islands 
of, 261. 

Allied Prisoners' Commission, 281. 

Ambulance Corps, Red Cross, 21 ; sec- 
tions absorbed in Army Medical 
Corps, 141-142; sections established 
on Italian front, 213, 215. 

Ambulance drivers, heroism of, 139-141. 

Ambulance ship Surf, 55-56. 

Ambulances, for naval establishment, 61. 

American Committee for Armenian and 
Syrian relief, cooperation of, with 
Red Cross, 255; cable from, to Red 
Cross War Council, on conditions in 
Palestine, 261-262. 

American Hostels for Refugees, 158. 

American Library Association, 50. 

American Relief Clearing House in Paris, 
4. 

American Society for Relief of French 
Orphans, 158. 

Annel, story of hospital at, 138-139. 

Archangel, Red Cross ship sent to, 279 ; 
relief work base at, 280. 

Armenians, relief work among, in Pales- 
tine, 265. 

Athens, work of Red Cross for children 
in, 260-261. 

Austrians, defeat of, by Italian army, 
215, 217-219. 

Baker, Secretary, requests Red Cross to 
take over service at railroad stations, 
39. 

Baltimore, Institute for Blind in, 130. 

Baltimore export warehouse, report of, 
120. 

Base hospitals, personnel for, supplied 
by Red Cross, 56-57 ; fifty furnished 
to army by Red Cross, 144; enter- 
tainment supplied at, in France, by 
Red Cross, 146-147. 

Base Hospital Units, organization of, 
81-83 ; amount spent on, 83 ; active 
work of, on declaration of war, 83-85 ; 
abandonment of system, 85. 



Basle, care of evacues in, 188. 
Belgian children, in Switzerland, 190. 
Belgians, in France, work for, 153-156. 
Belgium, appointment of special Red 
Cross department for, 22; German 
vandalism in, 193 ; heroic qualities of, 
193-194 ; the Red Cross to the rescue 
of, 194; work in, organized as a de- 
partment of French Commission, 195- 
196; problem of living quarters for 
refugees, 196-197 ; coordination of re- 
lief agencies for, 197-198; plight of 
army of, 198-199; Red Cross relief 
work for army, 199-201 ; Red Cross 
work supplementary only to that of 
Government of, 201-202 ; erection of 
barrack houses in, 202 ; stocks of food 
supplies prepared, 203; splendid 
work done by Queen of, 204-205; 
work of Countess Van Steen, 205- 
206; other private enterprises of re- 
lief in, 206 ; the Colonies Scolaires, 206. 

Beltiu, Rumania, gruesome conditions 
in, 236. 

Bernstorff, Count von, departure of, 
from Washington, 4. 

Biddle, General, quoted, 225. 

Blind, reeducation of the, 126-127; 
Institute for the, in Baltimore, 130. 

Brest, base hospitals in, 57. 

British Red Cross, cooperation of, with 
American Red Cross in Rumania, 245. 
See Great Britain. 

British Relief Fund for Palestine and 
Syria, 262. 

Brooklyn, U. S. cruiser, converted into a 
floating hospital, 275. 

Bureau International de la Paix, 180- 

181. 
Bureaus under Red Cross administration, 

38. 

Ccesar, cargo of, bought by Red Cross, 

255. 
California, Junior Red Cross activities 

in, 97, 98. . 



297 



298 



INDEX 



Camp Service, Bureau of, 38 ; work of, 

47-51 ; among American soldiers in 

Great Britain, 228. 
Cannes, conference of medical experts 

at (1919), 288. 
Canteen, picture of a, in France, 134- 

135. 
Canteens, Bureau of, 38. 
Canteens, rolling, 139, 213, 256 ; Canteen 

Service, vital importance of, 41 ; 

functions defined by army orders, 

41-42 ; one month's statistics of, 45 ; 

in Great Britain, 228-229. 
Canteen workers, 34 ; on the battlefront, 

136-137. 
Caporetto, disaster of, 208. 
Care Committee of London Chapter of 

Red Cross, 229. 
Cayexix-sur-Mer, schools established at, 

206. 
Chapters, division of National Red Cross 

into, 16-17 ; description of work of, 

23-36; supplies for, 115-118. 
Charlotte, N. C, incident at, 40. 
Chl,teau des Halles at Lyons, 173, 177. 
Children, mobilization of, in Junior Red 

Cross, 93-106. 
Child welfare exhibit at Lyons, 173. 
Child welfare work, extent of, as carried 

on by Red Cross in France, 168-178. 
Chinese children in Junior Red Cross, 

101. 
Civil Affairs Department, 158. 
Coast hospitals, lack of, 56. 
Colonial Dames, Society of, hospital 

ships equipped by, 55. 
Colonies Scolaires in Belgium, 206. 
Comfort, hospital ship, 55. 
Communication service of Red Cross, 

134, 147-149 ; enlarged to supply 

information about prisoners, 186 ; in 

Great Britain, 230. 
Compi^gne, narrative of, 137-138. 
Conge du Soldat Beige, 200. 
Convalescent houses built by Red Cross, 

50; at naval stations, 61. 
Cooperative stores for Belgians, 197, 

198. 
Czecho-Slovaks, the, 272 ; as a cause 

for Red Cross activity in Russia, 273- 

274. 

Daniels, Secretary, letter of, concerning 

Naval Auxiliaries, 58. 
Danish Red Cross, 182. 
Davison, Henry P., appointed chairman 

of War Council for American National 



Red Cross, 7; elected chairman of 

board of governors of Red Cross or- 
ganizations, 286. 
Decentralization plan of management, 

16-17. 
Delaere, Abbe, Colonies Scolaires of, 206. 
Delano, Jane A., a great name on honor 

rolls of Red Cross, 92. 
Dinard, Red Cross work at, 167-168. 
Director, the Red Cross, 48-50. 
Disabled soldier, treatment of the, 122- 

131 ; broad and liberal provision for, 

131. 
Disaster, work of Red Cross nurses in, 

80. 
Dispensaries established in France, 157 ; 

traveling, in France, 169-170. 
Drive, the first, of the American Red 

Cross, 9-11 ; the second, 36. 
Drives of Red Cross, funds realized by, 

291-292. 
Dying and dead, help for the, 150. 

Ecole Joffre, the, 128. 

Educational system of Home Service 
section, 19-20. 

Elizabeth, Queen of Belgium, great work 
of, for children and aged, 204-205 . 
Red Cross gives assistance to, 206. 

Emergency provision, 113. 

England, Red Cross commissioners 
chosen for, 21-22 ; lessons in reeduca- 
tion from, 127-128. See Great 
Britain. 

Evian, Red Cross work for refugee 
children at, 170-172 ; German policy 
in discharge of refugees through, 174- 
175. 

Exuma, island of, Red Cross work done 
in, 36. 

Families assisted by Home Service of 

Red Cross, 66 ff. 
Farrand, Dr. Livingston, chairman of 

Executive Committee of American 

Red Cross, 284. 
Fatalism, Asiatic, in Russia, 269. 
Field Director, the Red Cross, 48-50; 

time of, given to home problems of 

men in service, 72. 
First aid, 34. 
Follow-up work in reeducation, 129- 

130. 
Foreign commission, appointment of, 14. 
Foreign Relief, Bureau of, 113. 
Fourteenth Division, story of the, 35; 

contribution of, in second drive, 36; 



INDEX 



299 



conspicuous work of, for Russia, 275- 
278. 

Foyer du Soldat Beige, 199-200. 

France, appointment of Red Cross Com- 
mission to, 14; Red Cross nursing 
service in, 89-91 ; lessons in reeduca- 
tion from, 127-128; the futiu*e of, 
163 ; the children of, 163-164 ; army 
of refugee children, and Red Cross 
work for, 164-178. 

French Army, help given to, 161. 

French Commission, Red Cross work in 
Belgium at first organized as a de- 
partment of, 195-196. 

French Government, work for refugees 
by Red Cross done in cooperation 
with, 154-156. 

Gas gangrene, serum for, 146. 

Genoa, Red Cross hospital established 
at, 216. 

Germans, anti-American propaganda of, 
in Italy, 208-209 ; underhanded work 
of, with Russians against Rumanians, 
237-238 ; work of, in Greece through 
Tiu-ks and Bulgarians, 259. 

Girl heroes at Red Cross canteens 
abroad, 136. 

"Godmother of Good Works," French 
name for American Red Cross, 158. 

Goldsboro, N. C, incident of wounded 
soldier at, 44-45. 

Graves Registration Service, photog- 
raphers working under, 150 n. 

Great Britain, Red Cross work of, 222 flf. ; 
setting up of American Red Cross 
organization in, 224-225; hospital 
work of American Red Cross in, 226 ; 
hospitals of American Red Cross in, 
226-227 ; Camp Service among Ameri- 
can soldiers in, 228; "Our Day" of 
British Red Cross, 231 ; America's 
gift to British Red Cross, 231-232. 

Greece, conditions in, when war opened, 
258-259; work of Germany in, 259; 
appeal of Greek Red Cross for help, 
259 ; Red Cross assistance in, 259- 
261. 

Grosvenor Gardens, London, Red Cross 
war activities at, 230-231. 

Guam, Red Cross work in, 35. 

Guatemala earthquake, the, 113. 

Halifax disaster, the, 113. 

Havre, headquarters of Red Cross work 

for Belgium established at, 195; 

Belgian refugees at, 196-197. 



Hawaii, Red Cross work done in, 35. 

Henderson, Sir David, director-general 
of board of governors of Red Cross 
organizations, 286. 

Holy Land, Red Cross in the, 261-266 ; 
appropriations of War Council of Red 
Cross for, 266. 

Home Communication, Bureau of, 134, 
147-149, 186; work of, in England, 
230. 

Home dietetics, 34. 

Homes, reaction of Junior Red Cross on, 
100-101. 

Home Service, Bureau of, 42 ; functions 
of, 19-20 ; individual problems in- 
volved in, 35; lasting effects of, in 
betterment of social conditions, 77. 

Home Service institutes, establishment 
of, 76. 

Honor rolls of Red Cross, nurses' names 
on, 92. 

Hospitals, lack of coast, 56 ; personnel 
for base, supplied by Red Cross, 56- 
57 ; naval shore abroad, 57 ; for re- 
construction and reeducation of dis- 
abled soldiers, 124-125; for Belgian 
soldiers, 201 ; of American Red Cross 
in Great Britain, 226 ; in Serbia, 256. 
See also Base hospitals. 

Hospital service in the Army, 142-146. 

Hospital ships equipped through Red 
Cross, 55-56. 

Hospital supplies, preparation of, by 
Red Cross Chapters, 26-33 ; securing 
of, for Rumania, 243-245. 

Hospital supply service, 144-146. 

Hurry calls, 113-114. 

Incorporation of American Red Cross, 1. 
Influenza epidemic in Italy, 216. 
Institute for Blind, in Baltimore, 130. 
Institute for Crippled and Disabled Men, 

New York City, 128-129. 
Insurance of Red Cross shipments, 121. 
International Agency for Prisoners of 

War, 180. 
International Committee at Geneva, 

179 ; awarded peace prizes, 180. 
Ireland, emergency stations in, 225. 
Italian children in Junior Red Cross, 

101. 
Italian premier, address of, 110; ad- 
vises concerning coming of Red Cross 

representatives, 214. 
Italian soldiers, care of, in Switzerland, 

188-189. 
Italy, Red Cross Commission to, 21 ; 



300 



INDEX 



Red Cross nursing service in, 90; 
the Red Cross in, 207-208; the dis- 
aster of Caporetto, 208 ; Emergency- 
Commission sent to, from France, 
208 ; refutation of German propa- 
ganda in, 208-209 ; cooperation of 
Red Cross with Italian authorities, 
209-211 ; arrival of permanent Red 
Cross Commission in, 211; results of 
widespread activity of Red Cross, 211- 
213 ; ambulance sections and rolling 
kitchens estabHshed by, 213-214 ; 
aid given to soldiers' families in, 214- 
215; influenza epidemic in, 216; 
establishment of Red Cross hospital 
at Genoa, 216 ; Red Cross aid to 
American soldiers in, 216-217 ; de- 
feat of Austrians by forces in, 217- 
219 ; care for starving civilian popu- 
lation of, 219-221 ; Department of 
Tuberculosis in, 221 ; Red Cross ac- 
tivities turned over to Italian au- 
thorities with cessation of hostilities, 
221. 

Japanese, cooperation of, in relief work 
in Siberia, 278. 

Japanese children in Junior Red Cross, 
101-102. 

Jassy, conditions in, in 1917, 235; food 
brought to, by American Red Cross, 
241 ; relief work in, 247 ; Red Cross 
canteen at, and its work, 248 ; scene 
in public square of, upon departm-e of 
Red Cross Commission, 251. 

Jerusalem, work of British engineers in, 
262-263 ; Red Cross Commission in, 
263-264 ; character of relief work in, 
264-265 ; care of orphans in, 265. 

Junior Red Cross, 18 ; creation of the, 
93 ; reasons for, 93-96 ; account of 
activities of, 97-100 ; reaction of, on 
the homes, 100-101 ; notes from re- 
ports on work of, in schools, 103- 
104 ; permanent beneficial results of, 
105-106 ; splints for hospital use 
made by, 146. 

Knitting, machines for, 26. 

Labor, Department of, cooperation of 
Federal Board for Vocational Educa- 
tion and, 124. 

League of Red Cross Societies, formation 
and objects of, 286-288 ; future plans, 
of, 289-290. 

Lenhi County, Idaho, Junior Red Cross 
work in, 98. 



Letter-writing for soldiers, 148. 

Leysin, hospital for tuberculous Serbian 
officers at, 187-188. 

Library Committee of American Red 
Cross in London, 230. 

Lieth, base hospital in, 57. 

Lighthouses, Red Cross, 20. 

Liverpool, American Red Cross hospital 
in, 226. 

Livres des Soldats Beiges, 199. 

London, base hospital near, 57; St. 
Catherine's Lodge in, 226 ; naval 
hospital in Park Lane, 227 ; hospital 
in Kensington Palace Gardens, 227 ; 
Red Cross workrooms in, 229 ; ac- 
tivities of American Red Cross in, 
229-231. 

Los Angeles, Junior Red Cross in, 97. 

"Lost children of the Urals," the, 273. 

Lyons, child welfare exhibit at, 173. 

McKey, Lieutenant Edward, work of, 
and impression made by, 214. 

Madeira Islands, reUef work for the, 
113-114. 

Marie, Queen of Rumania, 237 ; sad 
and noble figure of, 239 ; work of 
mercy done by, 239-240; story of 
her country's misfortune told by, 
240 ; cablegram from, to War Council 
at Washington, 250 ; members of Red 
Cross Commission decorated by, 250. 

Marines, United States, in Russia, 275. 

Medical Advisory Committee, appoint- 
ment of, 21. 

Medical and Surgical Service of the 
Navy, 54. 

Medical Corps, Army : effectiveness of, 
133-134 ; cooperation of Red Cross 
with, 134 ; ambulance sections ab- 
sorbed in, 141-142. 

Membership drive of 1917, 17-18. 

Mercy, hospital ship, 55. 

Military Relief, department of, 38. 

Minneapolis, Junior Red Cross in, 97. 

Mirman, Prefet, great work of, for 
refugees, 166-168. 

Moldavia, conditions in province of, 235. 

Moscow, Red Cross mission in, 271-272, 
279. 

Motor Corps, Red Cross, 20-21 ; women 
enrolled in, 33-34. 

Motor Service, Bureau of, 38. 

Motor trucks for naval establishment, 61. 

Nancy, the workers of, 167. 
Nationalization of American Red Cross, 1. 



INDEX 



301 



Naval Affairs, Red Cross Bureau of, 22. 

Naval Auxiliaries, organization of, 58. 

Naval Reserve service, 53-55. 

Naval shore hospitals abroad, 57. 

Naval stations, camp service in, 61-62. 

Navy, Red Cross cooperation with the, 
52-64. 

Nesle, Red Cross work at, 169. 

New York export warehouse, report of, 
120. 

Niirses, Red Cross, 78-79; enrollment 
of, 79-80; called in cases of disaster, 
80; mobilization of, in 1917, 81; 
in Base Hospital Units, 81-83; 
passage of, into military establish- 
ment, 86; account of war activities 
of, 86-91 ; tributes of foreign surgeons 
to, 91; names of, on honor rolls of 
Red Cross, 92. 
Nursing, Department of, 21. 

Organization, Red Cross problems of, 

107-108. 
Orlando, Italian Premier, 110, 214. 
Otranto disaster, 225. 
''Our Day" of British Red Cross, 231- 

232. 



Paignton, England, American Red Cross 

hospital at, 226. 
Palestine, Red Cross activities in, 261- 

266. 
Paris, American Relief Clearing House 
in, 4; conference of Red Cross 
societies in (1919), 286. 
Park Lane, London, naval hospital in, 

227. 
Peking Chapter of Red Cross, 276. 
Perignan, charity for refugee children 

founded by, 166. 
Pershing, General, advises "backing 

up" the French, 13. 
Personnel Department of Red Cross, 

107-108. 
Petrograd, destitute children in, 271 ; 
Red Cross appropriation for ofi&cers' 
and soldiers' families in, 271. 
Philippine Islands, Red Cross work done 

in, 35. 
Photographs of graves taken by Red 

Cross, 150 n. 
Plattsburg Barracks, hospital for shell- 
shock patients at, 131. 
Poison-gas serum, 146. 
Porto Rico, Red Cross work done in, 35, 
36. 



Port Said, Red Cross takes charge of 

Armenian refugees at, 265. 
Prison camps, inspection of, by delegates 

from Switzerland, 181-182; number 

and location of, in Germany, 190-191. 
Prisoners of war, help for, 149, 191-192 ; 

Swiss activities in interest of, 180- 

186 ; Serbian, in Austria and Bulgaria, 

256-257 ; Russian, 274. 
Publicity, Red Cross Department of, 

22. 
Purchases, Bureau of, 111-112. 

Queenstown, base hospital in, 57. 

Railroad stations. Red Cross service at, 

39. 
Rappard, Professor William, secretary- 
general of board of governors of Red 
Cross organizations, 286. 
Ravitaillement service, appropriation of 

Red Cross for, 144. 
Receipt cards, prisoners', 185. 
Red Cross, American: incorporation 
and nationalization of, 1; sailing of 
first mercy ship, 2 ; increase in mem- 
bership of, 3-4 ; relief work of, through 
American Clearing House in Paris, 4 ; 
activities of, upon declaration of war 
on Germany, 6-7; appointment of 
War Council for, 7 ; first drive of, for 
$100,000,000, 9-11; plans and proj- 
ects of War Council at opening of 
1917, 12-13; appointment of foreign 
commission, 14; scrupulous care 
taken by, in spending people's money 
16; decentralization plan, 16-17 
membership drive of 1917, 17-18 
the Junior Red Cross, 18; Home 
Service, 19-20; work of, directly for 
soldiers, 20-21; Motor and Am- 
bulance Corps, Department of Niirs- 
ing, etc., 21 ; commissions to foreign 
countries, 21-22; Department of 
Supplies and Transportation, 22; 
description of work of Divisions and 
Chapters, 23-36; the Fourteenth 
Division, 36; work for the soldier 
at home, 37 ff. ; cooperation of, with 
the Navy, 52 ff. ; department of Home 
Service, 65-77; work of mirses, 78- 
79; problems of organization, 107- 
108; Personnel Department, 107- 
108; operations of Department of 
Supplies and Transportation, 108 ff. ; 
pmrchases of, combined with those of 
War Department, 114-115; work for 



302 



INDEX 



disabled soldiers, 122-131 ; work on 
the battlefront, 132-150; "backing 
up the French," 151-162; work for 
the children of France, 163-178; 
Switzerland as a central station, 179- 
192 ; work of, for Belgium, 195-206 ; 
work in Italy, 207-221; work of 
British Red Cross, 222 ff. ; work in 
Rumania, 233-251 ; work in Serbia, 
254-258; work in Greece, 259-261; 
work for Russia, 274-281 ; statistics 
of work of, from May, 1917, to Febru- 
ary, 1919, 291-296. 

Red Cross, relief ship, 80. 

Red Cross Institute for Crippled and 
Disabled Men, 128-129. 

Red Cross Societies, League of, formed, 
286-287. 

Reeducation of disabled soldiers, 123- 
129 ; Home Service in, 129-130. 

Refugees, work for, 153-159 ; discharge 
of, by Germans, through Evian, 170, 
174-175 ; French system in care of, 
175-176 ; particulars of American 
Red Cross assistance, 176-178. 

Relief Clearing House, American, in 
Paris, 160. 

Repos d'Elizaheth, Queen of Belgium's 
charity, 205. 

Research bm-eau maintained by Red 
Cross, 134. 

Rest stations behind battlefront, 135- 
137. 

Rolling canteens, 139 ; in Serbia, 256. 

Rolling kitchens on Italian front, 213- 
214, 215. 

Roman, hospital at, 246, 247-248. 

Rome, Red Cross Medical Warehouses 
in, 213. 

Rose, Mile, de, charity for refugee 
children conducted by, 166. 

Roux, Professor, chairman of conference 
of Red Cross Societies, 288. 

Rumania, Red Cross Commission to, 21 ; 
appalling conditions in, 233-234 ; 
American Red Cross fights disease in, 
235 ; program of first Red Cross 
mission, 239 ; noble part taken by 
Queen Marie, 239-240 ; story of, told 
by Queen, 240 ; food supplies brought 
in from Russia, 241 ; excerpt from 
newspaper of, on feeding of starving 
people by Red Cross, 242 ; secvuing 
of hospital supplies for, 243-245; 
departure for America of five members 
of Commission, 245; work of civilian 
relief in, 245-247 ; hospital at Roman, 



246, 247-248; manufacture of cloth- 
ing, from material secured from 
Russia, 248 ; forced surrender of 
cause of, 249 ; dismissal of Allied 
agents of relief by order of Germans, 
250 ; departure of Red Cross Com- 
mission, 250-251. 

Riu-al schools. Junior Red Cross in, 102. 

Russia, Red Cross Commission to, 21 ; 
relief of distress in, 114; food secured 
by Red Cross from, for Rvunania, 
241 ; material for clothing secured 
from, 248 ; magnitude of problem 
presented by, 267-268 ; the Red Cross 
in, in 1917, 268-271; the Trans- 
Siberian railway, 272-273; the 
Czecho-Slovaks, 273-274; Red Cross 
relief work for, 275-281. 

Russian Island, Red Cross hospital on, 
276. 

Russians, relief given to destitute, 187 ; 
conduct of, in Rumania, 235-236, 
249 ; virtual betrayal of Rumanians 
by, 237-238. 

St. Catherine's Lodge, London, Red 

Cross hospital at, 226. 
Salisbury Court, Red Cross hospital at, 

226-227. 
Saloniki, base of Red Cross work for 

Serbia, 254. 
San Diego, relief work for stu-vivors of, 

62-63. 
Sanitary Service, Bureau of, 38 ; work 

of, 45-47. 
Sascut, Rtunania, distribution of food 

at, 246. 
School Auxiliary, the, 96. 
Schools, correlation of Junior Red Cross 

and, 100. 
Scientific triumphs during the war, 146. 
Searchers, work of, for Bureau of Home 

Communication, 147-149. 
Serbia, Red Cross Commission to, 21 ; 

Red Cross work in, 80-81 ; hospital 

for tuberculous ofiicers of, in Switzer- 
land, 187-188 ; r61e of, in the war, 

253 ; account of Red Cross work in, 

254-258. 
Serbian Red Cross, the, 256. 
Shell-shock patients, hospital for, 130- 

131. 
Shipment of Red Cross supplies, 117-121. 
Sims, Admiral, praises of Red Cross by, 

63-64. 
Social disease, measures taken in regard 

to, 47. 



INDEX 



303 



Solace, hospital ship, 55. 

Sphagnum moss, use of, in Red Cross 
workrooms, 26. 

Staten Island canteen, 44. 

Statistics of Red Cross work from May, 
1917, to February, 1919, 291-296. 

Stores, Bureau of, 115-118. 

Strathpepper, base hospital at, 57. 

Supplies and Transportation, Department 
of, 22, 108 ff. 

Surf, ambulance ship, 55-56. 

Surgical dressings, preparation of, 26- 
33 ; supplying of, 59-60. 

Surgical wards in Red Cross canteens, 
43. 

Switzerland, International Committee in, 
179 ; Red Cross activities in, 180 ; 
work of, for prisoners of war, 180- 
185 ; assistance given to, by American 
Red Cross, 185-187 ; Hvacue problem 
in, 188; Italian problem in, 188- 
189 ; care of Belgian children in, 190. 

Temps, Paris, tribute to American Red 

Cross by, 161-162. 
Tompkinsville Naval Station canteen, 

44. 
Toul, refuge for children at, 153 ; Red 

Cross work at, 167. 
Training courses in home service, 76. 
Transportation, Bureau of, 118-119. 
Trans-Siberian railway, importance of, 

to Red Cross activity in Russia, 272- 

273. 
Transylvania, Rumania's hopes for re- 
covery of, 234. 
Trieste, Red Cross work at, 219-220. 
Tuberculosis, Department of, in Italy, 

221. 
Tuberculoxis children, work for, in 

France, 168-170. 
Tuberculous Serbian officers, hospital 

for, at Leysin, 187-188. 
Tuberculous soldiers, treatment of, 130. 
Tuscania, sinking of, the, 224. 

Vaccination by Sanitary branch of Red 
Cross, 46-47. 

Van Steen, Countess, heroic work of, 
205-206. 

Venereal diseases, measures taken in re- 
gard to, 47. 



Vinckem, Belgium, Queen's school at, 

206. 
Virgin Islands, Red Cross work done in, 

35. 
Viviani, Madame, refuge for children 

founded by, 166. 
Vladivostok, American Red Cross relief 

base at, 275, 276 ; refugee work in, 

276-278. 
Vocational Education, Federal Board for, 

124. 
Vocational Rehabilitation Law, 123. 
Vodena, refugee work of Red Cross in, 

256. 

War Council for American National 
Red Cross, appointment of, 7 ; two 
ideals held by, 8; plans of, in spring 
of 1917, 12-13 ; precautions of, in 
expenditure of money, 16 ; shipments 
of hospital supplies and food to 
Rumania by order of, 244-245; re- 
tirement of, 284; statistics of work 
accomplished by, 291-296. 

Warehousing in connection with Red 
Cross administration, 50-51 ; in 
France, 159-161. 

War Fund Drives, amounts realized by, 
291-292. 

Washington Union Station canteen, 43. 

Welch, Dr. William H., at conference of 
Red Cross Societies, 288. 

Wharton, Mrs. Edith, Tuberculeux de la 
Guerre founded by, 158. 

Wilson, President, appeal of, in behalf 
of Red Cross, 4; declaration of war 
on Germany by, 6 ; War Council for 
American National Red Cross ap- 
pointed by, 7. 

Women, work of, in Red Cross Chapters, 
25-33 ; in Red Cross Motor Corps, 
33-34. 

Wulveringhem, Belgium, hospital at, 
198. 

Young Men's Christian Association, 216. 
Yule parties at base hospitals in France, 
146-147. 

Zimmermann note, the, 5. 
Zionist Unit for relief of suffering Jews, 
265. 



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